1- 


EXCHANGE 


The  Belief  in  Immortality 


BY 


SIMEON   SPIDLE,  B.  D. 

Fellow  in  Psychology,  Clark  University 


A  DISSERTATION  SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF 
CLARK  UNIVERSITY.  WORCESTER.  MASS..  IN  PARTIAL 
FULFILMENT  OF  THE  REQUIREMENTS  FOR  THE 
DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  AND  ACCEPTED 
ON   THE   RECOMMENDATION    OF    G.    STANLEY   HALL 


N 


Reprinted  from  the  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology 
January,  1912,  Vol.  5,  No.  i,  pp.  5-51 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/beliefinimmortalOOspidrich 


The  Belief  in  Immortality 


BY 


SIMEON   SPIDLE,  B.  D. 

Fellow  in  Psychology,  Clark  University 


A  DISSERTATION  SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF 
CLARK  UNIVERSITY.  WORCESTER.  MASS..  IN  PARTIAL 
FULFILMENT  OF  THE  REQUIREMENTS  FOR  THE 
DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  AND  ACCEPTED 
ON  THE  RECOMMENDATION   OF    G.   STANLEY   HALL 


•V 


Reprinted  from  the  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology 
January,  1912,  Vol.  5,  No.  i,  pp.  5-51 


S7 


*..*'::♦:  ^ 


THE  BELIEF  IN  IMMORTALITY. 

By  SIMEON  SPIDLE,  B.  D., 
Fellow  in  PsycJiology,  Clark  University. 

Introductory. 

The  present  writer  makes  no  claim  to  having  any  special  light 
to  shed  upon  the  age-long  question  of  immortality.  He  is  rather 
an  inquirer  than  an  illuminator.  Having  been  for  a  number  of 
years  interested  in  this  subject,  there  has  grown  up  in  his  mind 
a  desire  to  make  somewhat  of  a  first-hand  study  of  it.  Others 
have  worked  in  this  same  field  and  have  given  us,  from  time  to 
time,  the  results  of  their  investigations.  All  this  is  necessary  in 
order  to  know  how  the  current  of  thought  concerning  the  belief 
in  an  after  life  is  tending.  No  one  cross-section  of  the  belief 
can  tell  us  this.  We  need  several  such  cross^sections  in  order 
to  indicate  the  direction  of  its  flow.  If  the  study  made  in 
this  paper  shall  in  any  small  degree  contribute  to  this  end,  the 
writer's  purpose  will  be  abundantly  fulfilled. 

The  subject  will  be  treated  under  four  general  heads.  First 
of  all  we  shall  attempt  an  analysis  of  the  concept  of  immortality 
with  a  view  to  determining  the  different  senses  in  which  that 
concept  is  used.  Next  we  shall  outline  the  different  theories 
which  have  been  advanced  to  account  for  the  origin  of  the  belief. 
Then  we  shall  make  a  brief  survey  of  the  grounds  upon  which 
the  belief  rests.  And,  finally,  we  shall  give  the  results  of  our 
own  empirical  study  regarding  the  present  status  of  the  belief. 

The  numbers  included  in  brackets  refer  to  the  corresponding 
numbers  in  the  bibliography  at  the  end.  Where  the  letter  p  is 
prefixed  to  the  number,  the  reference  is  to  the  page  of  the  book 
quoted. 

I.    Types  op  Immortality  Concepts. 

1.     Plasmic  Immortality: 

No  part  of  the  furnishings  of  the  human  mind  is  endowed 
with  greater  plasticity  than  the  concept  of  immortality.  It  is 
capable  of  being  moulded  into  a  great  variety  of  forms.  Not 
infrequently  do  we  hear  the  word  used  with  reference  to  the 
rejuvenating  power  of  protoplasm.     Not  long  since,  while  in 

255770 


6  JOURJSPAi,  OJP  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

conversation  wrtn  a-  proinment  biologist,  I  made  some  inquiry- 
regarding  the  work  being  done  in  his  class  room.  The  reply 
that  I  received  was  that  he  was  just  then  engaged  in  carrying 
his  class  through  a  course  on  the  ''immortality  of  protoplasm." 
This  may  seem  like  a  strange  application  of  the  term  to  one 
who  is  unacquainted  with  the  facts  of  biology,  but  to  one  who 
is  cognizant  of  those  facts  the  application  seems  entirely  justi- 
fiable. As  every  one  knows,  it  is  a  truism  of  biology  that  "no 
protozoa  have  any  dead  ancestors."  These  creatures,  lowest  in 
the  scale  of  animal  life,  and  composed  of  one  tiny  cell  of  proto- 
plasm, never  die  under  normal  conditions.  The  whole  mass  of 
the  cell  is,  in  a  sense,  reproductive  in  its  function,  the  mode  of 
reproduction  being  that  of  cell-division.  Taking  the  case  of  the 
amoeba,  which  is  the  lowest  form  of  all,  each  parent  cell  divides, 
without  loss  or  death  of  any  of  its  material,  into  two  equal  parts. 
We  have  then  two  creatures  instead  of  one,  each  having  half  of 
the  protoplasm  of  the  original  cell  from  which  they  were  pro- 
duced. Here  no  part  of  the  original  cell  can  be  said  to  be  the 
corpse  of  a  being  that  has  perished.  No  being  has  perished.  It 
has  simply  transformed  itself  into  two  beings.  The  only  pos- 
sible way  of  looking  at  such  a  process  as  this  is  to  say  that  the 
substance  and  life  of  the  original  cell  are  continued  on  under 
changed  conditions  without  loss  or  death. 

And  this  fact  of  plasmic  immortality  is  not  confined  solely 
to  the  protozoan  level  of  life.  Modern  embryology  has  revealed 
to  us  that,  in  a  limited  sense,  this  same  principle  obtains  also  on 
the  higher  levels  of  life,  including  man  himself.  Physical  death, 
or  "the  birth  of  the  corpse,"  took  place  in  the  animal  series,  as 
a  normal  experience,  only  when  in  the  metazoans  the  cells  began 
to  divide  themselves  into  two  specialized  groups,  the  somatic,  or 
vegetative  cells,  and  the  reproductive  cells.  The  vegetative  cells 
then  assumed  the  function  of  forming  for  the  animal  a  body. 
In  doing  so,  they  lost  their  original  power  of  perpetual  rejuvena- 
tion and  thus  became  subject  to  dissolution  and  death.  Why 
they  should  have  done  so  is  still  one  of  the  unsolved  problems 
of  biology.  Far  different,  however,  was  it  with  the  reproduc- 
tive cells.  They  still  retained  their  rejuvenating  power.  Both 
in  the  case  of  viviparous  and  oviparous  reproduction,  the  off- 
spring is  simply  a  fusion  of  two  parent  cells  which  have  detached 
themselves  from  the  reproductive  cells  of  the  parent  bodies. 
The  whole  chain  of  animal  life,  therefore,  from  the  amoeba  up 


SMDLE;   IMMORTALITY  7 

to  man,  is  simply  the  product  of  one  continuous  chain  of  death- 
less protoplasm  which  is  "eternally  young,  eternally  reproduc- 
tive, eternally  forming  new  individuals  to  grow  up  and  perish, 
while  it  remains  in  its  progeny  always  youthful,  always  increas- 
ing, and  always  the  same.  Thousands  upon  thousands  of  gen- 
erations which  have  risen  in  the  course  of  the  ages  were  its  pro- 
ducts, but  it  lives  on  in  the  youngest  generations  with  the  power 
of  giving  origin  to  coming  millions.  The  individual  organism 
itself  is  transient,  but  the  embryonic  substance  which  produces 
this  transient  organism  preserves  itself  to  all  ages  imperishable, 
everlasting,  and  constant." 

2.     Influential  Immortality. 

But,  rising  to  a  somewhat  higher  level,  we  meet  with  an  en- 
tirely different  use  of  the  term  immortality.  This  time  it  is 
applied  to  the  permanent  character  of  human  influence.  If  we 
designate  the  former  use  of  the  word  as  denoting  a  strictly 
biological  conception,  we  may  designate  this  latter  use  as  denot- 
ing a  strictly  positivistic  conception. 

Perhaps  no  better  statement  of  this  use  of  the  term  could  be 
formulated  than  that  given  by  Biichner,  the  famous  exponent 
of  German  materialism  during  the  last  century.  In  speaking 
of  death  and  immortality  in  his  Man  in  the  Past,  Present  and 
Future  (p.225),  he  says: 

**  Great  philosophers  have  called  death  the  fundamental  cause  of  all 
philosophy.  If  this  be  correct,  the  empirical  or  experimental  philosophy 
of  the  present  day  has  solved  the  greatest  philosophical  enigmas,  and  has 
shown  (both  logically  and  empirically)  that  there  is  no  death,  and  the 
great  mystery  of  existence  consists  in  perpetual,  uninterrupted  change. 
Everything  is  immortal  and  indestructible — the  smallest  worm  as  well  as 
the  most  enormous  of  celestial  bodies;  the  sand-grain  and  the  water-drop, 
as  well  as  the  highest  being  in  creation,  man  and  his  thoughts.  Only  the 
forms  in  which  being  manifests  itself  are  changing.  Being  itself  remains 
eternally  the  same  and  imperishable.  When  we  die,  we  do  not  lose  our- 
selves, but  only  our  personal  consciousness  or  the  causal  form  which  our 
being,  in  itself  eternal  and  imperishable,  had  assumed  for  a  short  time. 
We  live  on  in  nature,  in  our  race,  in  our  children,  in  our  descendants,  in 
our  deeds,  in  our  thoughts,  in  short,  in  the  entire  material  and  psychical 
contribution  which,  during  our  short  personal  existence,  we  have  furnished 
to  the  subsistence  of  mankind  and  of  nature  in  general.'* 

Comte  taught  the  same  doctrine.  He  held  that  the  only  im- 
mortality which  any  individual  can  reasonably  expect  to  attain 
is  the  perpetuation  of  his  memory  and  influence  in  the  race. 


8  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

This  abiding  influence  he  called  ''subjective  immortality,"  and 
held  it  up  in  true  Thanatopsis  fashion  as  the  great  incentive  to 
noble  living,  the  mighty  motive  to  admission  into  the  Company 
of  the  Saints  made  perfect  by  Positivism.  A  similar  view  is  that 
of  George  Eliot,  George  Meredith,  and  numerous  other  writers 
of  note.  In  his  poems  entitled  Earth  and  Man,  and  A  Faith  on 
Trial,  Meredith  constantly  exhorts  men  to  live  in  their  offspring 
and  to  dismiss  forever  from  their  minds  the  fictitious  desire  for 
a  personal  existence  beyond  this  life.  There  is  no  such  exist- 
ence. The  only  immortality  to  which  any  man  shall  ever  attain 
is  the  immortal  mark  which  his  influence  makes  upon  the  race 
in  which  he  has,  for  a  time,  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being. 

3.     Cosmic  Immortality. 

Leaving  now  these  rather  arbitrary  uses  of  the  word,  we  come 
next  to  a  somewhat  more  consistent  and  more  metaphysical  ap- 
plication of  the  term.  This  time  it  is  applied  to  the  permanent 
character  of  the  universe  itself.  This  is  the  pantheistic  notion 
of  immortality,  and  as  such  may  be  designated  as  cosmic  immor- 
tality. The  whole  universe,  it  is  said,  is  one  great  being  which 
is  eternal  and  immortal.  Out  of  this  one  unconscious  cosmic 
being  has  come  the  whole  train  of  individual  things,  including 
man  himself.  Each  individual  plays  his  part  in  his  own  day 
and  generation  and  then  sinks  back  again  into  this  great  uncon- 
scious world-soul  out  of  which  he  originally  sprang.  In  doing 
so,  he  loses  his  distinctive  personal  identity  but  not  his  essen- 
tial existence.  Just  as  the  drop  of  rain  which  falls  into  the 
sea  loses  its  own  particular  individual  form  in  the  great  indis- 
tinguishable mass  of  water,  yet  not  its  essential  existence,  so 
does  man  fall  back  at  death,  soul  and  body,  intot  the  one  imper- 
sonal essence  of  the  universe,  which  is  the  great  eternal  God  from 
whom  all  came  and  to  whom  all  return. 

The  great  philosophic  exponent  of  this  view  in  modern  times 
was  Spinoza,  although  the  view  is  as  old  as  philosophy  itself. 
Its  first  distinctive  advocate  was  Xenophanes,  the  founder  of 
the  Eleatic  School  of  pre-Socratic  philosophy.  Religiously,  it 
may  be  said  that  the  great  exponent  of  this  view  is  Buddha.  The 
heaven,  or  Nirvana,  of  Buddhism  has  long  since  been  a  bone  of 
contention,  but  for  all  practical  purposes  of  thought  it  can  be 
regarded  as  identical  with  the  heaven  of  the  pantheist.  It  is 
sometimes  erroneously  affirmed  that  Nirvana  means  annihilation. 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  9 

But  this  is  true  only  with  reference  to  finite  personality.  Nir- 
vana, in  the  true  Buddhistic  sense,  does  not  mean  the  annihilation 
of  existence  itself.  It  means  rather  the  annihilation  of  finite 
individuality  through  the  infinite  unfolding  of  individuality 
until  it  shall  lose  its  finite  limitations  in  becoming  coexistent  with 
the  universe  itself.  It  is  the  annihilation  of  personality  through 
growth,  just  as  the  seed  loses  itself  in  the  higher  existence  of  the 
plant,  or  the  ovum  in  the  higher  existence  of  the  fuU  grown  man. 
Of  course,  the  line  of  development  toward  this  goal  is  by  no 
means  straight-forward.  It  is  a  singularly  sinuous  one,  with 
numerous  backward  curvings  of  repeated  reincarnations  by 
means  of  which  the  soul  is  purged  of  its  egoistic  impulses  and 
desires  and  thus  made  to  take  on  the  larger  life  of  an  impersonal, 
cosmic  existence.  A  very  clear  and  sjnnpathetic  exposition  of 
this  view  is  given  by  W.  S.  Bigelow  (7). 

For  the  ethical  import  of  this  conception  of  a  future  existence 
the  reader  is  referred  to  C.  L.  Slattery's  Life  Beyond  Life  (61). 
While  not  accepting  this  view  of  the  future  as  his  own,  Mr.  Slat- 
tery  is  nevertheless  forced  to  recognize  in  it  a  very  lofty  ethical 
principle,  the  principle  of  moral  solidarity.  According  to  this 
view  the  highest  ethical  effort  of  man  consists  in  the  elimination 
of  all  his  purely  personal  and  egoistic  impulses  and  desires  by 
merging  them  into  the  wider  altruistic  interests  of  the  race.  To 
quote  his  own  words,  Mr.  Slattery  says: 

"The  selfishness  of  some  forms  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  immortality 
is  little  short  of  ghastly.  The  smug  satisfaction  of  the  mediaeval  saint, 
leaving  the  world  to  its  misery  and  sin  that  he  might  fit  his  own  miserable 
and  puny  soul  for  heaven,  is  not  edifying,  is  not  Christian.  We  have 
grown  to  think  the  saint  a  truer  saint  if,  with  some  little  flecks  from  the 
naughty  world,  he  has  stayed  in  the  world  and  helped  to  raise  others  with 
himself  toward  the  heavenly  vision.  It  is  the  great  and  growing  sense  of 
brotherhood,  of  mutual  responsibility,  that  is  making  us  feel  that  we  must 
reach  that  other  country  with  the  rest  of  mankind,  or  it  will  after  aU  be 
a  sad  and  mournful  abode  for  our  loving,  unselfish  hearts.  That  is  the 
ideal  toward  which  we  strive.  It  is  the  kernel  of  vital  truth  hid  within 
the  Buddhist's  doctrine  of  Nirvana.'* 

In  passing,  it  may  be  said  that  we  are  here  dealing  with  a  view 
of  immortality  which  is  widely  held  today  by  minds  of  great 
refinement  and  culture.  The  reason  for  this  we  are  told  is  noc 
far  to  seek.  Besides  the  ethical  charm  of  an  ever-expanding 
altruism,  already  referred  to,  there  is  inherent  in  this  view  the 
philosophic  charm   of   a  monistic   conception  of    the  universe 


10  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

which  tends  to  satisfy  the  irresistible  propensity  of  the  human 
mind  to  mentally  construct  its  material  into  a  universe  rather 
than  a  multiverse.  There  is,  furthermore,  inherent  in  this 
view,  it  is  said,  the  religious  charm  of  a  monotheistic  conception 
of  the  soul's  relation  to  its  God,  and  also  the  psychological  charm 
of  a  unifying  conception  of  life  which  tends  mightily  to  the 
solidifying  of  personality,  to  the  knitting  together  of  psychic 
experiences  against  the  inroads  of  abnormal  dissociations.  With 
all  these  features  to  commend  it,  we  are  not  at  all  surprised  to 
find  this  the  cherished  view  of  many  highly  cultivated  minds. 

4.    Personal  Immortality. 

There  still  remains  another  use  of  the  term  immortality  to  be 
considered.  This  time  it  is  applied  to  the  survival  of  person- 
ality itself.  It  is  the  theistic  conception  of  the  after  life,  and, 
as  such,  is  known  as  ''personal  immortality."  According  to 
theism,  God  is  not  the  impersonal  soul  of  the  universe,  as  pan- 
theism affirms,  but  is  a  transcendent  personal  Being,  existing 
independently  of  the  universe  and  yet  imminent  in  it  as  its 
upholder  and  providential  Ruler.  Neither  is  the  human  soul 
a  part  of  the  essence  of  deity,  as  pantheism  affirms.  It  is  rather 
a  secondary  essence,  a  thing  derived  from  the  creative  activity 
of  deity,  which  will  ever  retain  its  own  essential,  personal  exist- 
ence apart  from,  yet  in  ethical  relations  with,  deity.  As  to  the 
exact  nature  of  this  personal  identity  there  is  a  wide  divergence 
of  opinion  among  theists.  Some  hold  that  the  after  life  will  be 
a  continuation  of  the  present  but  under  more  favorable  condi- 
tions. Others  hold  to  a  sort  of  cataclysmic  conception  of  death 
by  means  of  which  the  soul  is  to  undergo  at  the  moment  of  its 
departure  from  the  body  a  sudden  and  radical  transformation 
such  as  will  purge  out  of  it  all  traces  of  moral  imperfection  and 
thus  enlarge  and  intensify  its  capacities  and  powers  beyond  the 
limit  of  anything  which  the  most  vivid  imagination  can  now 
envisage. 

In  general,  it  may  be  said  that  there  are  now  held  by  theists 
two  radically  different  conceptions  of  personal  immortality. 
According  to  the  one,  the  human  soul  is  essentially  immortal, 
immortality  being  an  inherent  quality  of  soul-essence.  Accord- 
ing to  the  other,  the  human  soul  is  not  inherently  immortal  but 
immortable,  that  is,  capable  of  being  made  immortal.     Those  who 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  11 

hold  to  the  former  view  are  driven  by  the  logic  of  the  situation 
to  postulate  the  personal  survival  of  all  human  beings,  good  and 
bad  alike,  while  those  who  hold  to  the  latter  view  escape  the  per- 
plexing problem  of  caring  for  moral  degenerates  in  the  after  life 
by  affirming  that  through  lack  of  moral  and  spiritual  cultivation 
these  souls  never  arrived  at  the  state  of  actual  immortality,  the 
result  being  that  at  death  they  simply  go  out  of  existence.  In- 
herent immortality,  it  may  be  said,  is  the  orthodox  view  of  pres- 
ent-day Christian  theology.  It  is  held  universally  in  the  Greek 
and  Roman  Catholic  Churches  and  also  by  the  great  majority  of 
Protestant  denominations.  Whether  or  not  the  New  Testament 
teaches  inherent  immortality  is  a  mooted  question.  Naturally 
enough,  the  advocates  of  this  view  say  that  it  does,  and  adduce 
not  a  few  passages  in  its  support.  On  the  other  hand,  the  advo- 
cates of  immortability,  or  ''conditional  immortality"  as  it  is  com- 
monly called,  say  that  it  does  not,  and  in  like  manner  adduce  a 
respectable  array  of  passages  in  support  of  their  view.  They 
tell  us  that  the  New  Testament  holds  out  the  hope  of  immor- 
tality only  to  those  who  receive  eternal  life  through  faith  in 
Christ  and  devotion  to  that  ideal  of  life  by  which  he  lived  and 
for  which  he  died.  The  idea  of  inherent  immortality,  it  is  said, 
crept  into  Christian  theology  during  the  Middle  Ages  at  the 
time  when  the  teachings  of  Plato  played  so  large  a  role  in  the 
formation  of  Christian  doctrine.  The  first  outstanding  voice  in 
modern  times  to  be  raised  against  this  so-called  relic  of  mediaeval 
theology  was  Rev.  Edward  White  of  England.  In  1846  he  pub- 
lished a  book  entitled  Life  in  Christ,  in  which  the  conception 
of  attainable,  as  over  against  inherent,  immortality  was  strongly 
advocated.  The  logic  of  White's  arguments  is  not  generally 
accepted  today.  But  his  book  served  to  call  attention  to  the 
subject  aiid  to  crystallize  certain  vague  stirrings  which  were 
then  at  work  in  the  minds  of  men  and  which  have  since  then, 
especially  within  the  last  few  years,  taken  shape  in  the  well- 
formed  eschatological  doctrine  of  conditional  immortality. 

Scientifically  considered,  this  view  has  much  in  its  favor.  It 
is  the  exact  counterpart  in  the  theological  world  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  "survival  of  the  fittest"  in  the  scientific  world.  As  ap- 
plied to  the  question  of  immortality,  the  doctrine  of  the  **  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest"  affirms  that  only  those  survive  death  who 
are  morally  fit.     The  rest  drop  out  of  the  race  and  become  ex- 


12  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

tinct.  Seizing  upon  this  scientific  postulate  in  support  of  his 
view,  the  advocate  of  conditional  immortality  has  only  to  tell  us 
who  the  morally  fit  are,  who  shall  survive.  They  are  the  spirit- 
ually renewed,  he  tells  us,  the  recipients  of  the  immortal  life 
through  filial  relations  with  God.  It  will  be  observed,  of  course, 
that  throughout  this  discussion  the  standpoint  is  religious  and 
philosophical.  The  existence  of  a  spiritual  entity  called  the  soul 
is  taken  for  granted.  The  only  question  at  stake  is  this,  is  this 
spiritual  entity  inherently  immortal  or  is  it  not.  One  camp  of 
theists  says  it  is,  while  the  other  camp  says  it  is  not  but  that  it 
may  become  immortal.  To  this  latter  view  one  serious  objec- 
tion is  raised.  It  is  assumed  by  the  advocates  of  immortability 
that  the  soul  is  essentially  mortal  or  subject  to  dissolution  and 
death,  but  that,  by  an  ethical  and  spiritual  readjustment  of  its 
relations  to  God,  it  may  be  made  essentially  immortal.  How,  it 
is  asked,  can  any  ethical  and  spiritual  readjustment  of  relation- 
ship between  God  and  man  effect  a  change  in  the  essential  con- 
stitution of  the  human  soul?  Can  love  and  obedience  to  God 
reorganize,  so  to  speak,  the  constituent  elements  of  the  soul  so 
as  to  ensure  it  against  dissolution  and  death?  What  is  this 
essential  change  which  takes  place  in  the  soul  when  it  passes 
from  a  state  of  mortality  over  into  a  state  of  immortality?  Is 
it  not  a  pure  fiction  of  the  imagination  born  of  a  superficial  cast 
of  metaphysical  thinking  ?  Such  is  the  objection  offered  by  the 
advocates  of  inherent  immortality  to  the  doctrine  of  immorta- 
bility. And  so  the  battle  rages,  each  side  holding  its  ground 
with  dogmatic  tenacity,  yet  both  agreed  that  whatever  of  future 
survival  there  is,  it  must  be  of  a  personal  character. 

Such  then  are  the  four  chief  uses  of  the  word  immortality,  the 
biological,  the  positivistic,  the  pantheistic,  and  the  theistic.  The 
first  two  can  hardly  be  classed  under  the  head  of  beliefs.  A  be- 
lief is  a  conviction  based  upon  considerations  of  greater  or  less 
probability  but  falling  short  of  actual  knowledge  based  upon 
experience.  Plasmic  and  influential  immortality  are  matters 
of  every-day  knowledge.  We  know  from  experience  that  these 
things  are  so.  Cosmic  and  personal  immortality,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  matters  of  belief.  They  rest  not  upon  experience,  but 
upon  presumptive  evidence  only.  It  is  in  these  latter  two 
senses,  therefore,  and  especially  in  the  sense  of  personal  immor- 
tality, that  we  shall  use  the  term  in  the  remaining  part  of  this 
paper. 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  13 

II.     Theories  Concerning  the  Origin  of  the  Belief. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  in  dealing  with  the  matter  of  origin 
we  lose  ourselves  in  an  exceedingly  dense  maze  of  prehistoric 
uncertainty.  The  precise  point  at  which,  in  the  unfolding  of 
the  human  mind,  the  idea  of  an  after  life  first  dawned  upon  the 
threshold  of  human  consciousness  cannot  be  definitely  deter- 
mined. There  may  be  little  evidence  of  its  presence  during  the 
Palaeolithic  age,  but  there  is  clear  evidence  of  its  presence  during 
the  Neolithic  period.  The  ornaments,  weapons,  tools  and  food 
placed  by  the  side  of  the  dead,  as  well  as  the  sacred  drawings 
upon  tombs,  etc.,  all  seem  to  indicate  some  conception  of  sur- 
vival. Especially  true  is  this  of  the  position  of  the  body  in  the 
tomb.  One  of  the  peculiar  features  of  Neolithic  burial  was  the 
bent-up  posture  of  the  body  to  represent,  apparently,  the  posi- 
tion of  the  foetus  in  the  womb.  This  fact  is  now  regarded  by 
some  ethnologists  as  a  rather  strong  evidence  of  a  Neolithic  belief 
in  human  survival.  The  grave  may  have  been  looked  upon  as 
the  womb  of  mother-earth  from  which  the  soul  of  the  dead  was  to 
be  born  anew  into  an  after  life.  Some  such  motive,  it  is  thought, 
must  have  induced  these  early  peoples  to  have  placed  their  dead 
in  such  an  unnatural  position. 

The  question  now  arises,  whence  came  this  belief?  How  did 
man  ever  come  to  have  awakened  within  him  this  conviction  of 
an  after  life?  As  already  stated,  we  are  here  dealing  with  a 
question  that  lies  entirely  outside  the  sphere  of  demonstrable 
certainty.  Our  best  knowledge  is  wholly  a  matter  of  conjecture, 
based,  of  course,  upon  considerations  of  greater  or  less  proba- 
bility.    Three  such  conjectures  have  been  advanced. 

1.    Nativistic  Hypothesis. 

The  first  theory  purporting  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  belief 
in  immortality  is  that  known  as  the  ''nativistic"  hypothesis. 
According  to  this  view,  man  came  upon  the  stage  of  his  earthly 
existence  with  the  idea  of  immortality  ingrained  into  the  very 
structure  of  his  mental  constitution.  Plato,  of  course,  is  the 
classical  exponent  of  this  view.  His  theory  is  rather  unique. 
He  held  to  the  pre-existence  of  the  human  soul.  Man  *s  earthly 
life  is  a  brief  span,  during  which  an  eternal  and  immortal  soul 
links  itself  up  for  a  time  with  a  temporal  and  perishable  body. 
This  spiritual  voyager  from  the  other  world,  in  coming  over  into 
this  tenement  of  clay,  brought  with  it  a  full  stock  of  knowledge 


14  JOURNAL  OP  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

acquired  during  its  earlier  existence.  This  epistemological  outfit 
then  furnished  the  basis  of  all  earthly  advancement.  The  acqui- 
sition of  knowledge  for  Plato  was  simply  and  wholly  a  process 
of  reminiscence,  a  lifting  up  into  the  focus  of  clear  consciousness 
that  which  was  previously  known  but  which  the  process  of  rein- 
carnation had  for  a  time  obscured.  How  has  man  come  to  the 
idea  of  an  after  life?  Plato  answers,  by  calling  to  mind  the 
fact  of  his  former  life.  The  fact  that  he  has  lived  carries  with 
it  the  necessary  implication  that  he  will  live.  And  so,  out  of  the 
depths  of  his  own  soul,  man  fishes  up  his  belief  in  immortality. 
This,  to  be  sure,  is  innateness  with  a  vengeance,  and,  in  the 
crass  form  in  which  Plato  held  it,  is  not  popular  today  except 
among  those  who  still  believe  in  the  doctrine  of  reincarnation, 
notably  the  theosophists. 

But  there  is  a  less  drastic  form  of  this  hypothesis  which  has 
been  and  is  held  very  widely  by  those  who  do  not  believe  in 
reincarnation.  Emerson  may  be  cited  as  a  good  exponent  of 
this  type.  In  speaking  of  the  origin  of  the  belief  in  immortality 
he  says: 

^'I  know  not  where  we  draw  the  assurance  of  prolonged  life,  of  a  life 
which  shoots  the  gulf  we  call  death  and  takes  hold  of  what  is  real  and 
abiding.  Here  is  the  wonderful  thought.  But  whence  came  it?  Who  put 
it  into  the  mind.  It  was  not  I,  it  was  not  you.  It  is  elemental.  It  belongs 
to  thought  and  virtue,  and  whenever  we  have  either  we  see  the  bearers  of 
this  light.  Whenever  the  Master  of  the  universe  has  points  to  carry  in  his 
government,  he  impresses  his  will  in  the  structure  of  minds." 

That  expresses  very  clearly  the  essence  of  the  nativistic  hy- 
pothesis. Man  believes  in  his  own  future  existence  because  the 
idea  of  such  an  existence  is  imprinted  upon  each  human  soul  by 
the  hand  of  its  Creator. 

The  advocates  of  this  hypothesis  are  very  fond  of  quoting  the 
experience  of  Huxley  in  support  of  their  view.  As  is  well 
known,  Huxley  was  an  avowed  agnostic  on  the  subject  of  immor- 
tality. He  neither  affirmed  nor  denied  it.  He  simply  lived  a 
good  life  and  wrought  a  good  work  in  utter  disregard  of  the 
future.  But  strange  to  say,  while  he  disregarded  the  future,  the 
future  did  not  disregard  him.  In  spite  of  all  his  agnosticism, 
the  thought  of  an  after-life  forced  itself  in  upon  him  with  sin- 
gular persistency.  In  a  letter  written  to  Morley  near  the  close 
of  his  life  Huxley  makes  this  frank  confession.     He  says : 

^ '  It  is  a  curious  thing  that  I  find  my  dislike  to  the  thought  of  extinction 
increasing  as  I  get  older  and  nearer  the  goal.     It  flashes  across  me  at  all 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  15 

sorts  of  times  and  with  a  sort  of  horror  that  in  1900  I  shall  probably  know 
no  more  of  what  is  going  on  than  I  did  in  1800.  I  had  sooner  be  in  hell  a 
good  deal — at  any  rate  in  one  of  the  upper  circles  where  the  climate  and 
company  are  not  too  trying.  I  wonder  if  you  are  plagued  in  this  way." — 
{Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II,  p.  67.) 

Here,  it  is  said  triumphantly  by  the  advocates  of  nativism,  is 
a  striking  confirmation  of  our  position.  Why  was  Huxley  un- 
able to  shake  ofi:  this  haunting  idea  of  an  after  life?  Simply 
because  it  was  a  part  and  parcel  of  the  native  stock  of  his  soul- 
furniture.  So  far,  all  is  plain  sailing.  Nothing  could  be  more 
simple  and  self-evident.  We  believe  we  are  immortal  because 
the  Creator  has  implanted  the  idea  of  immortality  into  the  very 
texture  of  our  natures.  Such  is  the  theory,  and  so  it  might 
stand  were  it  not  for  the  destructive  weapons  of  the  restless 
critic.  As  all  must  see,  the  whole  theory  rests  upon  the  philo- 
sophic assumption  of  the  validity  of  innate  ideas,  a  philosophic 
bark  that  has  had  a  stormy  sea  on  which  to  sail  ever  since  the 
days  of  Locke.  As  it  is  not  within  the  scope  of  our  present  pur- 
pose to  discuss  this  basal  principle  on  which  the  theory  rests,  it 
must  suffice  to  say  that  at  best  it  is  only  an  assumption,  and,  as 
such,  any  theory  resting  upon  it  can  carry  weight  only  in  so  far 
as  the  assumption  itself  is  well  grounded. 

2.    Revelatory  theory. 

A  second  conjecture  which  attempts  to  explain  the  origin  of 
the  belief  in  an  after  life  is  that  known  as  the  "revelatory  hy- 
pothesis." According  to  this  theory,  the  human  race  did  not 
come  into  existence  with  the  idea  of  a  future  life  imbedded 
within  the  texture  of  its  psychical  operations,  but  received  this 
idea  at  a  later  date  through  the  mediation  of  a  divine  revelation. 
This  revelation,  it  is  said,  was  not  an  isolated  experience  of  the 
race,  but  was  a  part  and  parcel  of  a  larger  revelation  which 
marks  the  origin  of  religion  itself.  Referring  to  this  view,  Dr. 
Brinton  says,  in  his  Religions  of  Primitive  Peoples  (p.  43) : 

**A  strong  school  of  Christian  writers,  led  early  in  this  century  by 
Joseph  de  Maistre  and  Chateaubriand,  and  represented  in  our  own  tongue 
by  Archbishop  Trench,  have  asserted  that  all  faiths,  even  the  most  savage, 
are  fragments  and  reminiscences,  distorted  and  broken  indeed,  of  a  primi- 
tive revelation  vouchsafed  by  the  Almighty  to  the  human  race  everywhere 
at  the  beginning.  These  have  occupied  themselves  in  pointing  out  the 
analogies  of  savage  and  pagan  creeds  and  rites  with  those  of  Christianity 
in  proof  of  their  theory." 


16  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  view  which  postulates  the  origin  of  the 
belief  in  immortality  as  an  integral  part  of  a  larger  revelation 
''vouchsafed  by  the  Almighty  to  the  human  race  everywhere 
at  the  beginning."  But  what  about  this  original  revelation, 
asks  the  critic,  both  as  to  its  historic  validity  as  well  as  its  psy- 
chological possibility?  Here  again,  it  is  said,  we  are  standing 
on  the  slippery  ground  of  a  great  philosophic  assumption,  the 
assumption  of  the  possibility  and  validity  of  a  supernatural  reve- 
lation, and  with  the  credibility  of  this  basal  assumption,  stands 
or  falls  the  credibility  of  any  theory  that  is  built  upon  it. 

3.     Genetic  hypothesis. 

A  third  conjecture  purporting  to  explain  the  origin  of  the 
belief  in  a  future  life  is  that  known  as  the  ' '  genetic  hypothesis. '  * 
According  to  this  view,  the  belief  originated  not  as  the  result  of 
an  innate  idea  nor  yet  as  the  result  of  a  divine  revelation,  but 
rather  as  the  product  of  man's  whole  mental  reaction  to  his 
environment  during  the  early,  plastic  stages  of  his  psychic  de- 
velopment. 

The  factors  involved  in  this  early  experience  of  the  race  which 
conspired  to  produce  this  belief  are  variously  estimated  by  the 
different  supporters  of  this  hypothesis.  It  is  generally  con- 
ceded, however,  that  the  tap  root  of  the  belief  is  to  be  found  in 
the  fact  of  death  itself.  The  human  race  has  never  taken  kindly 
to  the  idea  of  death.  There  seems  to  be  a  deep-seated  desire  in 
every  normal  human  being  to  live.  In  fact,  so  irrepressible  and 
universal  is  this  desire  in  the  whole  gamut  of  life,  that  Darwin 
was  led  to  postulate  the  "struggle  for  existence"  as  one  of  the 
bed-rocks  on  which  to  build  his  whole  theory  of  evolution  by 
natural  selection.  ' '  The-will-to-live, "  as  it  has  been  called,  and 
its  counterpart,  the  dread  of  death,  is  regarded,  according  to 
the  genetic  hypothesis,  as  the  basal  motivation  out  of  which 
the  belief  in  immortality  originated. 

In  this  process  of  belief -making,  dreams  are  thought  to  have 
played  an  important  role.  The  supposition  is  that  at  first  primi- 
tive man  looked  upon  death  merely  as  a  deep,  prolonged  sleep 
from  which  the  slumberer  would  sooner  or  later  awaken.  Not 
finding  this  expectation  fulfilled,  naturally  enough  a  psychic 
tension  was  produced,  which  issued  in  dreams  concerning  the 
dead.  Visions  of  them  were  seen.  These  visions  naturally  led 
to  the  impression  that  these  slumberers  left  their  dwellings  at 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  17 

night  and  roamed  abroad.  Hence  arose  the  idea  of  a  double 
or  second  self,  which  lingered  around  and  was  in  some  way- 
dependent  for  its  existence  upon  the  same  kind  of  nourishment 
which  had  supported  the  body  previous  to  death.  Consequently, 
food  was  taken  at  regular  intervals  to  the  tombs  of  the  dead  in 
order  to  nourish  the  soul  of  the  departed. 

Haeckel  emphasizes  a  somewhat  different  factor.  In  his  Rid- 
dle of  the  Universe,  he  seeks  to  account  for  the  idea  of  immor- 
tality in  what  he  calls  a  "necessity  of  emotion."  Taking  his 
cue  from  Kant,  that  the  conviction  of  immortality  is  not  a  postu- 
late of  the  pure  or  theoretical  reason  but  of  the  practical  or 
ethical  reason,  he  demolishes,  to  his  own  dogmatic  satisfaction, 
all  the  arguments  hitherto  advanced  in  support  of  a  rational 
belief  in  an  after-life,  and  then,  having  done  so,  raises  the 
question,  how  did  this  transcendent  delusion  ever  gain  its  grip 
upon  the  human  mind.  His  answer  is  that  it  sprang  up  out  of 
two  fundamental  emotional  cravings  of  the  human  soul,  the  de- 
sire for  a  better  condition  of  life  than  is  here  enjoyed,  and  the 
desire  for  a  happy  reunion  with  loved  ones  in  this  better  land  by 
and  by.  Being  pressed  on  every  hand  by  innumerable  adversi- 
ties, and  being  denied  a  thousand  delights  which  the  heart  most 
eagerly  desires,  the  crucified  emotions  are  said  to  have  taken 
refuge  in  consoling  dreams  of  a  blissful  existence  beyond  the 
grave. 

Others  emphasize  the  element  of  aspiration  as  the  fundamental 
motive  in  giving  rise  to  the  belief  in  an  after  life.  Primitive 
man,  it  is  said,  launched  out  upon  some  great  undertaking,  but 
before  completing  his  task  he  is  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
benumbing  fact  that  he  is  about  to  die.  Not  being  allowed  to 
carry  out  his  cherished  plan,  he  commits  the  execution  of  it  to 
the  hands  of  another.  This,  however,  fails  to  satisfy  the  lofty 
aspirations  of  his  heart.  Proxy  attainment  will  not  do.  With- 
out himself  his  undertaking  will  be  spoiled.  No  other  mind  can 
adequately  conceive  his  ideal,  and  no  other  hand  can  adequately 
execute  its  attainment.  He  must  complete  the  task  himself. 
And  so,  the  wish  being  father  to  the  thought,  as  is  always  the 
case,  there  arises  in  his  mind  the  settled  conviction  that  he  will 
complete  his  task,  that  the  present  life  with  all  its  golden  possi- 
bilities is  but  an  earnest  of  a  future  life  in  which  all  the  broken 
efforts  of  to-day  shall  be  brought  to  a  successful  issue  in  the 
larger  attainments  of  to-morrow. 


18  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

But,  someone  asks,  how  can  such  a  theory  of  the  origin  of  the 
belief  in  immortality  explain  the  universality  of  this  belief  as  it 
exists  among  primitive  peoples  1  Granted  that  such  an  idea  did 
by  some  happy  accident  strike  its  roots  into  the  soil  of  some  im- 
aginative soul  which  was  especially  favored  by  native  endowment 
and  local  environment  for  the  reception  of  it,  how  did  it  come 
to  disseminate  itself  so  universally  and  at  so  early  a  date  as  the 
Neolithic  Age?  The  answer  given  by  the  genetic  hypothesis  is 
that  the  universality  of  this  belief  rests  upon  a  broad  psycho- 
logical principle,  the  unity  of  action  in  human  intelligence. 
Upon  this  fact  the  whole  science  of  psychology  rests.  Unless 
all  normal  minds  functioned  in  a  somewhat  similar  fashion, 
there  could  be  no  such  a  thing  as  a  science  of  psychology.  There 
could  be  psychologies  of  individuals,  but  no  psychology  of  man  as 
such.  Speaking  of  this  law  of  unitary  mental  activity,  Dr. 
Brinton  says,  in  his  Religions  of  Primitive  Peoples  (p.  6) : 

''And  here  I  must  mention  a  startling  discovery,  the  most  startling,  it 
seems  to  me,  of  recent  times.  It  is  that  these  laws  of  human  thought  are 
frightfully  rigid,  are  indeed  automatic  and  inflexible.  The  human  mind 
seems  to  be  a  machine.  Give  it  the(  same  materials  and  it  will  unfailingly 
grind  out  the  same  product.  So  deeply  impressed  by  this  is  an  eminent 
modern  writer  that  he  lays  it  down  as  a  fundamental  maxim  of  ethnology 
that  'we  do  not  think,  thinking  merely  goes  on  within  us.'  " 

The  bearing  of  this  broad  psychological  principle  upon  the 
universality  of  the  belief  in  immortality  among  primitive  peo- 
ples is  clear.  The  same  fundamental  laws  of  psychic  activity 
operated  everywhere,  giving  to  all  men  a  like  reaction  to  the 
data  of  experience  out  of  which  the  belief  originated. 

In  an  article  in  Harper's  Magazine  (13),  on  ''The  Survival 
of  Human  Personality,"  Dr.  Alexander  F.  Chamberlain  has 
given,  from  the  genetic  point  of  view,  a  very  clear  presentation 
of  the  supposed  transmutations  through  which  the  idea  of  sur- 
vival passed >  in  its  early  development  in  the  race.  At  first, 
primitive  man  had  no  conception  of  a  personal  immortality. 
The  surviving  spirit  had  little  or  nothing  in  common  with  the 
personality  previous  to  death.  Oftentimes  it  was  looked  upon, 
even,  as  an  evil  spirit  full  of  malevolent  restlessness.  But  as 
the  idea  and  appreciation  of  personality  became  clearer  in  the 
minds  of  men,  the  tendency  arose  to  postulate  personal  identity 
in  the  after  life: 


SPIDLE:    IMMORTALITY  19 

''One  great  step  was  taken  when  man  began  to  look  upon  himself  as 
something  more  than  a  mere  reproductive  being.  As  von  Negelein  has 
pointed  out,  so  long  as  man  was  regarded  as  a  reproducer  of  offspring 
simply,  personality  and  its  high  implications  were  impossible  and  unthought 
of.  The  perpetuation  of  the  race  having  been  assumed,  the  individual 
might  drop  out  of  sight  without  concern  or  damage.  The  birth  of  his  son 
made  the  father  a  mere  cipher  in  the  community.  The  extent  to  which 
such  a  belief  could  be  carried  is  seen  in  the  ancient  Hindu  practice,  in 
accordance  with  which  the  father  who  has  repeated  himself  in  his  son,  after 
imparting  to  the  latter  the  sacred  veda-knowledge,  which  constitutes  him 
the  very  image  of  his  parent,  retreats  soulless,  as  a  beggar,  into  the  forest. 
His  personality  has  become  extinct  on  earth,  and  its  survival  in  another 
world  would  be  a  superfluity.  At  this  stage  of  human  thought  self -repe- 
tition, not  the  evolution  of  personality,  was  the  care  of  mankind.  And 
woman  fared  much  worse  than  man,  whose  appendage  she  was.  She  is  con- 
ceived of  at  this  period  as  soulless  often  and  devoid  of  all  personality,  as 
also  is  her  child  until  the  soul  and  the  personality  of  his  father  are  trans- 
mitted to  him.'' 

The  writer  then  proceeds  to  show  how  this  impersonal  idea 
was  transmuted  by  slow  degrees  so  as  to  take  on  the  idea  of  a 
personal  survival.  The  first  motivation  to  such  a  change  he 
finds  in  hero-worship,  and,  according  to  some,  the  first  class  of 
heroes  to  be  immortalized  with  personal  survival  was  the  warrior 
class.  In  an  age  when  the  dominant  interest  of  man  was 
physical  prowess,  naturally  enough  the  warrior  came  to  be 
regarded  with  special  veneration.  His  worthship  to  the  com- 
munity was  supreme.  Indeed,  of  such  transcendent  value  was 
his  personality  to  the  life  of  the  community,  that  when  he  died 
upon  the  battlefield  fighting  for  his  people  it  was  an  easy 
transition  in  thought  to  follow  him  on  in  imagination  into  the 
other  world  where  he  was  supposed  to  survive  in  full  posses- 
sion of  his  personal  powers  to  complete  the  struggle  which  he 
had  here  begun.  Having  thus  risen  by  slow  degrees  from  the 
plain  of  a  belief  in  a  mere  impersonal  survival  to  the  exalted 
plain  of  a  belief  in  the  personal  immortality  of  the  warrior,  it 
was  an  easy  movement  in  human  thought  to  extend  this  honor 
to  other  great  benefactors  of  the  community.  And  so  priests, 
doctors,  poets,  and  artists  all  came  at  an  early  date  to  be  can- 
didates for  this  glorious  distinction  of  personal  immortality. 
Once  having  started  in  this  direction,  there  was  no  obstacle  to 
impede  progress  until  all  men  were  included  within  its  embrace, 
and  thus  by  slow  but  sure  degrees  the  race  came  to  its  noon-day 
conviction  of  a  universal,  personal  survival. 


20  JOURNAL  OP  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

Such,  in  brief,  are  the  three  leading  hypotheses  set  forth  to 
account  for  the  origin  of  the  belief  in  an  after  life.  Which  of 
these  views  best  accords  with  the  facts  of  the  case  must  be  left 
for  each  individual  to  decide  for  himself.  And  this,  we  ar«? 
happy  to  say,  is  an  entirely  safe  proposition,  for  no  man's  wel- 
fare either  here  or  hereafter  is  in  any  way  conditioned  by  thrr 
validity  of  the  theory  which  he  may  hold  with  regard  to  the 
birth  of  humanity's  idea  of  an  after  life.  If  the  idea  itself 
can  bear  the  pragmatic  test,  the  manner  of  its  origin  has,  after 
all,  only  a  theoretic  interest. 

III.    Grounds  Upon  Which  the  Belief  Rests. 

In  the  interest  of  clearness  we  shall  divide  the  arguments 
advanced  in  support  of  immortality  into  three  groups,  the  phUo- 
sophicalj  the  scientific,  and  the  religious. 

1.    Philosophical  grounds. 

At  what  particular  time  in  the  psychic  development  of  the 
race  man  began  to  philosophize  concerning  his  belief  in  an 
after  life,  seeking  to  buttress  his  sentiments  and  convictions 
with  more  or  less  well-reasoned  arguments,  we  do  not  know. 
So  far  as  we  do  know,  it  remained  for  Plato  to  be  the  first  to 
formulate  arguments  which  carried  with  them  the  authority  of 
a  rational  demonstration  of  an  after  life.  The  crucial  thing 
in  Plato's  position  was  his  belief  in  inherent  immortalty. 
Primitive  man,  as  we  have  seen,  was  long  in  coming  to  this 
conception.  To  him,  personality  was  immortable  rather  than 
immortal.  But  with  Plato  the  idea  of  inherent  immortality 
stepped  out  from  the  shadows  of  primitive  vagueness  and  once 
for  all  made  itself  felt  as  a  determining  factor  in  the  relig- 
ious and  philosophical  thought  of  all  succeedages.  In  a  some- 
what recent  work  Dr.  J.  A.  Beet  (5)  traces  out  the  influence  of 
Plato's  views  upon  the  formulation  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  a  future  life.  In  a  brief  resume  of  the  ground  over  which  he 
has  travelled  he  says : 

'*We  have  now  traced  the  popular  and  traditional  doctrine  of  the  end- 
less permanence  of  all  human  souls  to  the  teaching  of  Plato  and  to  the 
school  of  philosophers  of  which  he  is  the  most  illustrious  representative; 
and  have  endeavored  to  prove  that  it  was  altogether  alien  from  the  phrase 
and  thought  of  Christ  and  his  apostles  so  far  as  his  teachings  and  theirs 
are  embodied  in  the  New  Testament;  and  that  it  entered  into,  and  subse- 
quently became  prevalent  in,  the  church  mainly  through  the  influence  of 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  21 

Plato,  apparently  in  the  latter  part  of  the  second  century.  We  have  also 
considered  the  teaching  of  several  modem  theologians,  but  have  not  found 
any  one  who  seriously  endeavors  to  prove  that  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
is  taught  in  the  Bible"  (p.88). 

With  this  background  of  Plato's  importance  in  the  field  of 
philosophical  argumentation  for  immortality,  let  us  ask,  what 
were  the  grounds  on  which  Plato  based  his  belief  and  whence  did 
he  derive  it?  It  is  commonly  understood  that  Plato  was  in- 
debted for  his  views  regarding  an  after  life  chiefly  to  Pytha- 
goreanism,  the  Greek  religion,  and  the  Greek  mysteries  which 
were  essentially  immortality  cults.  The  nerve  of  his  argiunent 
is  contained  in  his  **Phaedo.''  In  this  dialogue  Plato  has  put 
into  the  mouth  of  Socrates  his  mature  thought  concerning  a 
future  life.  In  prison,  on  that  fatal  day  when  Socrates  drank 
the  poison  hemlock,  he  tells  those  around  him  why  it  is  that 
he  can  face  death  so  cheerfully.  It  is  because  death  has  no 
power  to  destroy  his  soul.  Analyzing  the  arguments  advanced 
by  Plato's  Socrates,  they  are  as  follows:  The  soul  is  seen  to 
be  immortal  from  the  fact  of  its  capacity  and  desire  for  knowl- 
edge which  it  cannot  attain  in  this  life;  from  the  law  of  con- 
traries which  runs  all  through  life  and  according  to  which  rest 
prepares  for  labor  and  labor  for  rest,  day  ends  in  night  and 
night  disappears  in  day,  and  so  life  terminates  in  death  and 
death  in  life;  from  the  intuitive  character  of  knowledge,  all 
knowledge  being  a  product  of  recollection ;  from  the  simple  and 
indivisible  nature  of  the  soul,  only  compound  substances  being 
capable  of  dissolution  and  death;  and  finally,  from  the  immu- 
table goodness  of  God,  God  being  too  good  to  destroy  so  beau- 
tiful a  thing  as  the  human  soul. 

These  arguments  carry  little  weight  with  them  today.  The 
second,  third,  and  fourth,  namely,  those  based  upon  the  law 
of  contraries,  the  reminiscent  character  of  knowledge,  and  the 
indivisibility  of  the  soul,  are  the  merest  ghosts  of  the  human 
imagination.  They  rest  upon  the  most  arbitrary  sort  of  assump- 
tions. Only  the  first  and  last,  namely,  that  based  upon  the 
capacity  and  desire  for  unattainable  knowledge,  and  that  based 
upon  God's  appreciation  of  the  aesthetic  value  of  the  human 
soul,  carry  any  sort  of  weight  for  present-day  thinking. 

From  the  time  of  Plato  on,  Greek  philosophy  ran  a  zig-zag 
course  in  its  attitude  toward  the  doctrine  of  immortality.  Aris- 
totle was  ambiguous  on  the  subject,  the  Epicureans  denied  it. 


22  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  Stoics  accepted  it  in  the  cosmic  sense,  and  the  Neo-Platonists 
virtually  deified  it.  Throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  and  up  to 
our  own  day,  numerous  philosophical  arguments  have  been  ad- 
vanced in  support  of  the  belief  in  an  after  life,  all  more  or  less 
colored  with  Platonism.  In  a  general  way  these  can  be  grouped 
under  six  different  rubrics. 

The  first  is  the  metaphysical  argument.  It  assumes  that  mind 
and  matter  are  two  distinct  entities,  each  capable  of  existing 
apart  from  the  other. 

The  second  is  the  analogical  argument.  On  the  basis  of 
numerous  analogies  drawTi  from  nature,  such  as  the  transforma- 
tion of  energy,  the  metamorphosis  of  the  chrysalis,  and  the 
winter  slumber  of  certain  hibernating  animals,  it  is  argued  that 
the  soul  will  certainly  survive  the  changes  involved  in  physical 
death.  The  classical  exponent  of  this  mode  of  argumentation 
is  Bishop  Butler,  of  whom  Huxley  said,  ''  Read  Butler  and  see 
to  what  drivel  even  his  great  mind  descends  when  he  has  to 
talk  about  the  immortality  of  the  soul." 

The  third  is  the  teleological  argument,  which  regards  man  as 
purposefully  endowed  with  capacities  and  powers  which  fit  him 
for  attainments  far  in  advance  of  anything  to  which  he  can 
possibly  achieve  in  this  present  life. 

Closely  related  to  this  is  the  moral  argument.  This  world,  it 
is  said,  is  a  scene  of  injustice.  Not  infrequently  do  the  virtuous 
die  unrewarded  and  the  vicious  unpunished.  If  death  ended 
all,  human  life  would  be  a  tragedy.  But  death  does  not  end 
all.  It  is  the  dropping  of  the  curtain  between  the  scenes  of  one 
continuous  drama  of  soul-life.  It  will  require  the  second  scene 
to  even  up  the  moral  situation  to  the  complete  satisfaction  of 
man's  deepest  sense  of  injustice,  and  since  justice  demands  such 
a  scene,  we  are  assured  on  the  ground  of  the  moral  argument 
that  such  a  scene  is  forthcoming.  Kant's  argument  for  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  falls  under  this  same  general  rubric. 
To  Kant,  obedience  to  an  inner  sense  of  duty,  the  "Categorical 
Imperative,"  as  he  called  it,  is  the  supreme  obligation  resting 
upon  man.  Obedience  to  this  inward  moral  monitor  should 
always  lead  to  happiness,  and  in  a  perfect  state  of  existence 
always  does  lead  to  happiness.  But  man's  present  state,  says 
Kant,  is  not  one  of  perfection,  and  so,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
virtue  and  happiness  do  not  always  go  hand  in  hand  in  this 
life.     But  thej^  are  intended  to  do  so,  and  since  their  perfect 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  23 

unity  is  not  attained  here  there  must  be  another  life  in  which 
this  unity  is  attained.  Such  was  the  argument  of  Kant.  The 
weakness  of  it  is  clear.  On  the  ground  of  moral  progress,  sup- 
posing the  day  should  ever  come  when  in  this  present  life  vir- 
tue and  happiness  should  always  go  together,  what  need  then 
would  there  be,  on  the  basis  of  Kant's  argument,  for  an  after- 
life? The  goal  of  attainment  for  which  that  life  was  posited 
would  be  reached  here  and  now,  and  Kant's  heaven  would  be 
left  dangling  in  mid-air  with  all  of  its  logical  underpinning 
knocked  out  from  under  it. 

The  other  argument  set  forth  in  support  of  the  belief  in 
immortality  is  the  ethnological.  Mankind  the  world  over,  holds 
the  idea  of  an  after  life.  This  fact,  it  is  thought,  carries  with 
it  a  very  strong  presumptive  argument  in  favor  of  immortality. 
This  mode  of  reasoning  is,  of  course,  as  old  as  the  Eleatics.  It 
lies  at  the  very  roots  of  Parmenides'  great  philosophic  assump- 
tion, an  assumption  which  held  its  place  in  the  foreground  of 
philosophic  thought  all  the  way  down  to  the  time  of  Hegel, 
namely,  that  ' '  the  thinkable  is  the  real, ' '  But  if  this  were  true, 
says  the  critic  of  the  ethnological  argument,  then  my  latch-key 
should  always  be  in  my  pocket  whenever  I  reach  for  it,  for 
whenever  I  do  reach  for  it  I  think  it  is  there.  But  as  a  matter 
of  fact  it  is  quite  often  not  there.  In  such  a  case  the  thinkable 
is  certainly  not  the  real.  My  latch-key  is  not  in  my  pocket 
because  I  think  it  is  there.  Neither  is  my  soul  immortal,  says 
the  same  critic,  because  I  think  it  is  or  because  all  men  may 
think  it  is.  On  the  same  ground,  it  is  said,  we  should  be  able 
to  prove  the  reality  of  ghosts  and  witches. 

So  far,  then,  philosophical  speculation  has  helped  us  but  little 
in  the  laying  of  a  solid  foundation  on  which  to  build  our  hopes 
for  an  after  life.  If  such  a  foundation  can  be  found,  it  must 
evidently  be  sought  for  elsewhere. 

2.    Scie7itific  grounds. 

Turning  now  from  philosophy  to  science  in  search  for  light 
concerning  the  possible  grounds  on  which  to  rest  a  rational 
belief  in  immortality,  we  are  confronted  with  a  great  variety 
of  personal  attitudes.  In  a  general  way,  scientists  can  be 
grouped  into  three  classes  on  the  basis  of  their  attitude  toward 
the  subject  of  immortality.  One  is  the  unhelieving  class.  Re- 
flecting upon  the  particular  group  of  scientific  data  with  which 


24  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

they  are  especially  familiar,  those  who  constitute  this  class  have 
come  to  the  settled  conviction  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
personal  immortality.  Science,  for  them,  furnishes  not  only 
no  suggestion  of  such  a  thing,  but,  what  is  more,  it  furnishes 
suggestions  which  are  somewhat  opposed  to  such  a  view.  In 
the  interests  of  intellectual  honesty,  therefore,  they  are  obliged 
to  affirm  that  they  do  not  and  can  not  accept  the  traditional 
teachings  of  religion  which  posit  the  personal  survival  of  man 
beyond  this  life. 

Opposed  to  this  group  stands  the  believing  class.  For  them 
the  data  of  science  are  but  a  fragment  of  the  sum-total  of  all  the 
data  upon  which  human  beliefs  are  to  rest.  What  and  if  sci- 
ence does  not  warrant  a  belief  in  personal  immortality,  it  is 
said.  Science  is  but  a  late  comer  upon  the  field  of  human  his- 
tory. Its  best  findings  in  any  department  of  knowledge  are  as 
yet  very  limited.  To  make  all  beliefs  square  to  its  present  dis- 
closures would  be  a  hasty  step  indeed.  It  has  yet  much  to 
learn  which  may  greatly  modify  its  present  findings.  Besides, 
there  are  other  interests  than  those  of  science  which  demand 
our  serious  attention.  To  cast  them  aside  is  to  play  the  foolish 
part.  We  need  to  be  progressive,  but  our  progress  should  always 
be  conservative,  holding  fast  to  all  that  is  valuable  in  our  inheri- 
tance from  the  past  while  we  push  ever  onward  into  new  fields 
of  investigation.  Religion,  while  it  may  not  have  had  a  stain- 
less career,  is  not  altogether  an  unmixed  evil.  It  has  its  claims, 
and  these  should  be  recognized.  For  the  most  part,  the  belief 
in  immortality  has  been  a  great  moral  blessing  to  the  race.  It 
has  comforted  the  sorrowing  and  guided  the  aspiring.  And 
since  there  is  as  yet  no  positive  disproof  of  the  belief,  eithei" 
scientific  or  otherwise,  we  do  well,  it  is  said,  to  hold  fast  to  it, 
conserving  it  as  one  of  the  efficient  agencies  making  for  the 
highest  moral  development  of  the  race. 

Midway  between  these  two  extremes  stands  the  agnostic  class. 
They  neither  affirm  nor  deny  the  fact  of  an  after  life.  They 
simply  say,  we  know  nothing  about  it,  it  is  an  open  question,  it 
may  be  true  and  it  may  not.  If  there  is  such  a  thing,  it  is  barely 
possible  that  some  day  we  shall  be  fortunate  enough  to  have 
clear  evidence  of  it.  That  being  so,  let  us  possess  our  souls  in 
patience,  waiting  the  day  of  larger  disclosures  toward  which 
our  present  age  is  rapidly  advancing.  And  so  we  have,  as 
already  stated,  these  three  attitudes  among  scientists,  the  nega- 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  25 

tive  believer  who  says  there  is  no  future  life,  the  positive  be- 
liever who  says  there  is  a  future  life,  and  the  neutral  believer 
who  says  there  may  and  there  may  not  be  a  future  life,  I  know 
nothing  about  it,  I  stand  on  absolutely  neutral  ground  and  shall 
continue  to  stand  there  until  more  positive  evidence  is  forth- 
coming. Clearly  enough,  to  the  first  and  last  of  these  three 
classes,  the  negative  and  neutral  believer,  science  in  its  present 
state  has  no  suggestion  whatever  to  offer  in  support  of  a  rational 
belief  in  an  after  life.  But  to  the  second  class  the  matter  stands 
somewhat  differently.  While  not  accepting  any  of  the  data  of 
science  as  furnishing  a  positive  proof  of  immortality,  yet  they 
regard  some  of  its  findings  as  furnishing  more  or  less  presump- 
tive evidence  in  that  direction. 

(a)     The  conservation  of  energy. 

Chief  among  the  postulates  of  science  which  are  looked  upon 
as  pointing  toward  the  possibility  of  a  future  life  is  the  doc- 
trine of  the  conservation  of  energy.  As  all  know,  it  is  one  of 
the  basal  assumptions  of  science  that  the  sum  total  of  all  energy 
in  the  universe  is  a  constant  factor.  Amid  the  multitudinous 
changes  of  nature,  energy,  we  are  told,  is  constantly  being 
changed  from  one  form  into  another  but  without  any  increase 
or  diminution  of  its  quantity.  Energy  in  the  form  of  mechan- 
ical work  may  successively  pass  over  into  electricity,  light,  and 
heat,  and  in  turn  be  reconverted  again  into  mechanical  work, 
and  when  the  process  is  completed,  we  have  exactly  the  same 
amount  of  energy  with  which  we  started,  provided  no  loss  has 
been  sustained  on  the  way.  Working  inductively  on  the  basis 
of  such  experiments  as  these,  the  far-reaching  inference  has 
been  drawn  that  no  change  in  the  whole  great  universal  flux  of 
things  ever  creates  or  destroys  any  energy.  It  simply  converts 
energy  from  one  form  into  another.  And  the  same,  we  are 
told,  is  true  of  mass.  As  yet  we  know  nothing  that  can  effect 
the  quantity  of  a  given  mass.  We  may  subject  it  to  all  manner 
of  changes,  mechanical  or  chemical,  and  yet  its  quantitative  value 
remains  constant.  It  must  be  admitted,  of  course,  that  such  a 
doctrine  as  this  is  nothing  short  of  a  far-reaching  scientific 
assumption.  As  yet,  no  one  has  subjected  all  energy  and  all 
matter  to  the  test.  But  so  far  as  experimentation  has  been 
carried  the  assumption  holds,  and  for  all  practical  purposes  it 
may  be  regarded  as  possessing  universal  validity. 


26  JOUENALi  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

And  now  for  the  bearing  of  this  fact  upon  the  belief  in 
immortality.  Granting  that  mind  is  a  form  of  energy,  why,  it 
is  asked,  should  the  human  mind  present  an  exception  to  this 
universal  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy  which  holds  through- 
out the  entire  domain  of  the  physical  universe?  If  it  is  reason- 
able to  believe  that  all  the  energy  entering  into  the  physiological 
processes  of  the  body  during  the  course  of  a  life-time  is  con- 
served without  loss,  even  after  death  has  disintegrated  the  ele- 
ments of  the  body,  is  it  not  equally  reasonable  to  believe  that  all 
the  energy  entering  into  the  psychical  processes  of  the  mind, 
which  ran  their  course  parallel  with  the  physiological  processes 
of  the  body,  is  also  conserved  even  after  the  dissolution  of  the 
body  by  death?  Present  day  physiology,  of  course,  forbids  us 
assuming  any  such  thing  as  an  interchange  of  energy  between 
body  and  mind.  Carefully  conducted  experiments  seem  to  have 
shown  conclusively  that  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy 
holds  within  the  realm  of  the  human  body.  No  process  of 
thought  nor  act  of  will  ever  creates  any  energy  in  the  nervous 
system.  The  only  source  of  energy  for  that  system  is  physical 
nourishment,  and  it  has  been  clearly  shown  that  the  amount  of 
energy  expended  by  the  different  physiological  processes  is 
exactly  proportionate  to  the  amount  of  energy  obtained  through 
nourishment.  This  being  so,  we  are  at  present  obliged  to  con- 
ceive of  a  human  being  as  constituted  of  two  parallel  streams 
of  energy,  which  run  side  by  side  throughout  the  whole  course 
of  life,  each  keeping  pace  with  the  other  yet  neither  overflowing 
its  banks  at  any  time  to  empty  its  waters  into  the  other.  If,  now, 
we  are  justified  in  saying  that  one  of  these  streams  is  conserved 
after  death,  and  we  know  that  it  is,  are  we  not  justified  in  sup- 
posing that  the  other  is  conserved  also  ?  This,  we  are  told,  is  a 
much  more  scientific  view  of  the  case  than  the  opposite,  which 
affirms  the  conservation  of  the  stream  of  physical  energy  and 
the  annihilation  of  the  stream  of  psychical  energy.  If  one  per- 
sists, and  we  know  that  it  does,  then  why  not  the  other  ? 

So  far,  the  advocates  of  the  belief  in  immortality  on  the  ground 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  energy  seem  to  have  the 
logic  of  the  situation  on  their  side.  But,  says  the  opponent  of 
this  view,  even  though  the  logic  of  the  situation  be  granted,  at 
best  it  can  argue  only  for  an  impersonal  immortality.  While 
it  is  true  that  the  energy  of  the  body  does  persist  after  death, 
yet  it  does  so  not  as  the  formative  principle  of  a  distinct  indi- 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  27 

vidual,  but  in  a  disorganized  condition.  So  for  the  psychical 
side,  it  is  said.  Even  though  the  energy  of  the  mind  may  per- 
sist after  death,  yet,  on  the  basis  of  the  analogy  assumed,  we  are 
allowed  to  postulate  at  most  its  persistence  only  in  a  disorgan- 
ized, impersonal  condition,  for  if  these  two  streams  of  energy 
run  their  course  in  a  perfectly  parallel  fashion  all  though  the 
life  of  the  individual  what  warrant  have  we  for  assuming  that 
at  death  they  enter  upon  divergent  courses?  Such  a  supposi- 
tion, we  are  told,  begs  the  whole  question  and  is  at  heart  utterly 
unscientific.  And  so,  there  we  are.  On  the  basis  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  conservation  of  energy  cosmic  immortality,  there- 
fore, seems  highly  probable,  while  personal  immortality  seems 
highly  improbable. 

(h)     The  conservation  of  value. 

But  there  is  another  principle  operative  in  the  field  of  science 
which  is  sometimes  quoted  as  favoring  a  belief  in  human  sur- 
vival. It  is  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  value.  Science 
tells  us  that  this  earth  on  which  we  live  came  to  its  present  con- 
dition through  the  operation  of  certain  definite  forces  which 
worked  by  slow  degrees  through  millenniums  of  ages.  Beginning 
with  a  sort  of  undifferentiated  ball  of  gaseous  nebulae,  it  is 
assumed  that  accretions  and  condensations  gradually  took  place 
giving  rise  to  our  solar  system  with  its  great  network  of  revolv- 
ing planets.  In  the  course  of  time  the  temperature  lowered,  a 
rocky  core  was  formed,  the  surface  of  this  core  crumbled  into 
soil,  the  waters  collected  into  deep  basins  to  form  the  seas  which 
in  turn  become  the  cradle  of  life.  This  life,  at  first  a  mere  uni- 
cellular speck  of  protoplasm,  slowly  evolved  into  multicellular 
forms  of  life,  giving  rise  at  last  to  the  highly  organized  verte- 
brate, the  fish.  One  day  this  daring  Columbus  of  the  sea  in  one 
of  its  bold  innovations  ventured  out  upon  the  land,  took  to 
breathing,  developed  lungs  out  of  gills,  legs  and  wings  out  of 
fins,  and  thus  arose  reptiles  and  birds.  Some  of  these  land 
creatures  then  improved  their  condition  by  becoming  viviparous, 
and  thus  was  ushered  in  the  reign  of  mammals.  Finally,  out  of 
mammalian  development  came  the  flower  of  the  animal  series, 
man  himself.  At  first  he  was  hardly  distinguishable  from  his 
twin  brothers,  the  apes,  but  very  soon  he  began  to  show  his  dis- 
tinctively human  qualities  by  his  unique  intellectual  and  moral 
advancement,  until  behold  him  in  this  twentieth  century  the 


28  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

lord  and  master  of  creation.  All  through  this  process  of  devel- 
opment, we  are  told,  there  was  present  one  very  distinctive 
factor,  namely  the  conservation  of  values.  Wherever  nature 
was  fortunate  enough  to  hit  upon  some  quality  that  had  in  it 
special  worth  for  the  higher  ends  toward  which  the  whole  pro- 
cess was  blindly  moving,  there  attention,  as  it  were,  was  focused 
until  that  quality  became  a  fixed  factor  in  the  great  evolving 
system.  Labors  in  this  direction  were,  of  course,  not  always 
successful.  Numerous  species  on  which  untold  ages  of  patient 
toil  had  been  expended,  eventually  retrograded  and  became 
extinct.  Devolution  as  well  as  evolution  marked  the  whole 
course  of  the  movement.  As  one  has  aptly  put  it,  "The  privi- 
lege of  going  to  hell  has  ever  existed  throughout  the  whole  pro- 
cess of  organic  evolution."  And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  these  blind 
alleys  of  partial  retrogression,  the  general  trend  of  the  whole 
movement  was  ever  onward  and  upward,  so  that  the  forces  of 
the  universe  have  not  labored  in  vain  but  have  attained  sublime 
success  in  the  conservation  and  reinforcement  of  their  best 
productions. 

Such  has  been  the  course  of  events  so  far.  Each  new  age  has 
been  a  distinct  advance  upon  the  preceding  one,  reaching,  as  we 
have,  the  present  age  with  highly  refined  moral  personality  as 
the  ripest  product  of  the  whole  process.  And  now  comes  the 
question  as  to  the  ultimate  goal  of  all  this.  Is  the  process  to 
stop  here?  Is  moral  personality,  with  all  of  its  marvellous  pos- 
sibilities, and  for  the  production  of  which  all  the  creative  energy 
of  the  universe  has  worked  with  infinite  patience  through  mil- 
lenniums upon  millenniums,  a  mere  transient  bubble  to  be  burst 
by  the  hand  of  physical  death  ?  Is  this  supreme  value  of  the  uni- 
verse, for  the  creation  of  which  all  other  values  have  been  merely 
auxiliary,  a  mere  will-o-the-wisp  which  the  forces  of  nature  have 
been  vainly  chasing  through  all  the  ages  ?  Was  Heraclitus  right  ? 
Is  the  universe  nothing  more  than  a  grinding  mill  with  an  empty 
hopper?  Is  no  grist  ever  ground  out?  Does  nothing  of  per- 
manent value  ever  emerge  out  of  thic  gigantic  process  of  ** be- 
coming'^  with  all  of  its  sacrifice  and  suffering?  Where  in  all 
the  universe  have  we  ever  yet  seen  this  developing  process  turn 
back  upon  itself,  and  what  grounds  have  we  for  assuming  that 
it  ever  will  do  so  ?  Is  it  not  far  more  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
death,  instead  of  being  the  annihilation  of  personality,  is  but 
an  incident  in  a  great  cosmic  process  of  evolution,  and  that  this 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  29 

highest  value  so  far  attained,  instead  of  becoming  extinct,  is 
conserved  and  made  the  nexus  of  union  with  another  order  of 
existence  which  is  as  much  in  advance  of  the  present  as  the 
human  is  in  advance  of  the  animal?  Unless  this  be  so,  then 
the  universe  is  indeed  a  ' '  riddle ' '  as  Haeckel  has  denominated  it. 
And  so,  the  belief  in  personal  immortality,  we  are  told,  is  the 
necessary  correlate  of  the  scientific  doctrine  of  the  conservation 
of  value  which  lies  at  the  very  basis  of  the  whole  evolutionary 
hypotheses.  As  T.  H.  Green  has  expressed  it,  "it  is  impossible 
to  believe  without  intellectual  confusion  that  a  system  whose 
visible  goal  is  the  evolution  of  personality  ends  in  the  extinction 
of  personality." 

To  be  sure,  strenuous  opposition  has  been  offered  to  this  idea 
of  personal  immortality,  as  supported  by  the  conception  of  the 
conservation  of  values.  The  principal  point  of  attack  has  been 
the  fact  of  the  correlation  between  mind  and  brain.  Physiolog- 
ical psychology  has  shown  us  that  all  mental  processes,  so  far 
as  we  know  anything  about  them,  are  intimately  correlated  with 
corresponding  brain  processes.  What  the  exact  nature  of  this 
correlation  is  no  one  as  yet  knows.  But  whatever  its  exact 
nature  may  be,  it  is  there.  Destroy  those  centers  in  the  brain 
that  function  for  speech  or  sight  or  hearing  and  you  render  at 
once  the  subject  mute  or  blind  or  deaf,  as  the  case  may  be.  The 
evident  conclusion  seems  to  be  that  if  you  destroy  all  the  centers 
of  the  brain,  as  is  the  case  in  death,  you  thereby  destroy  all  the 
psychical  operations  which  have  been  correlated  with  those  cen- 
ters. In  his  little  book  on  Human  Immortality  (38),  the  late 
Professor  William  James  has  sought  to  clear  the  ground  of  this 
objection.  He  recognizes  two  kinds  of  functional  dependence, 
a  productive  and  a  transmissive  function,  and  in  his  judgment 
the  functional  dependence  of  the  mind  upon  the  brain  is  not  a 
productive  but  a  transmissive  function.  Thought  is  not  a  pro- 
duct of  brain  activity  in  the  sense  that  bile  is  a  secretion  of  the 
liver.  If  it  were,  then,  of  course  the  destruction  of  the  brain 
would  involve  the  annihilation  of  the  mind.  But  thought,  he 
holds,  is  rather  transmissively  dependent  upon  brain  activity. 
It  may  exist  quite  independent  of  all  neural  processes  and  yet 
without  those  processes  be  utterly  unable  to  make  itself  known. 
In  such  a  case  the  destruction  of  the  brain  would  in  no  wise 
involve  the  annihilation  of  the  mind.  In  the  thought  of  Pro- 
fessor James,  the  nervous  system  stands  related  to  the  physical 


30  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

world  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  mental  world  on  the  other 
hand  somewhat  as  the  Atlantic  cable  stands  related  to  Europe 
and  America.  You  may  destroy  the  cable,  but  in  so  doing  you 
do  not  destroy  either  Europe  or  America.  You  simply  cut  off 
their  means  of  inter-communication.  So  for  the  nervous  sys- 
tem. Destroy  it  and  the  line  of  communication  between  mind 
and  the  external  world  is  gone,  but  mind  itself  is  in  no  sense 
destroyed  thereby. 

A  less  scientific,  but  somewhat  ingenious,  attempt  has  been 
made  by  various  other  writers  to  solve  this  problem  attempted 
by  Professor  James.  The  view  assumes  that  there  is  encased 
within  the  visible  body  a  semi-material  body  of  like  shape  and 
size,  which  serves  as  the  connecting  link  between  the  physical 
and  the  mental.  At  death  this  transparent  duplicate  takes  its 
departure  from  the  body  with  the  soul,  and  serves  thereafter 
as  the  material  basis  of  the  soul's  activity.  If  the  reader  is 
interested  in  this  solution  of  the  problem,  he  will  find  a  good 
discussion  of  it  in  D'Albe  (17),  Bjorklund  (8),  and  Frank  (22). 

(c)     Spiritism. 

In  recent  years  science  has  interested  itself  in  seeking  to 
establish  objective  demonstration  of  the  validity  or  invalidity  of 
the  belief  in  immortality.  Assuming  that  there  are  surviving 
spirits,  the  aim  has  been  to  get  into  speaking  communication 
with  them.  To  this  end,  certain  individuals  are  chosen  as  ' '  me- 
diums" through  whom  these  spirits  communicate  their  thoughts 
to  certain  inhabitants  of  earth.  The  supposition  is  that  in  some 
way,  quite  unknown  to  us  of  course,  the  soul  of  the  medium 
vacates  the  body  for  a  time  during  which  period  some  spirit 
from  the  other  world  takes  its  place  as  the  "control"  of  the 
medium,  making  use  of  the  physiological  mechanism  of  the  body 
as  a  means  of  communicating  its  thought  either  by  vocal  utter- 
ance or  by  written  language.  Claims  to  performances  of  this 
sort  have  been  in  existence  for  a  long  time,  but  no  scientific 
attention  was  given  to  them  until  within  recent  years.  The 
first  systematic  effort  to  study  them  was  made  by  the  British 
Society  for  Psychical  Research.  When  this  Society  was  organ- 
ized in  1882,  one  of  its  aims  was  the  investigation  of  the  claims 
of  spiritism.  This  aim  it  has  pursued  with  much  diligence. 
Its  findings,  not  only  in  this  field  but  also  in  the  fields  of  tele- 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  31 

pathy,  crystal-gazing,  hypnotism,  clairvoyance  etc.  are  simply 
enormous. 

Out  of  all  that  has  been  done  by  this  Society,  both  in  England 
and  America,  have  evolved  three  distinct  attitudes  with  refer- 
ence to  the  subject  of  spiritism.  One  is  the  attitude  of  implicit 
faith  in  an  objective  demonstration  of  the  existence  of  spirits. 
It  is  believed  by  not  a  few  that  clear  evidence  has  been  estab- 
lished of  actual  communication  with  departed  spirits  through 
the  agency  of  mediums.  A  second  attitude  is  that  of  suspended 
judgment.  To  the  members  of  this  class,  much  of  the  evidence 
collected  by  the  Society  seems  to  warrant  a  belief  in  the  validity 
of  spirit-communication,  and  yet  the  possibilities  of  error  are 
sufficiently  great  to  act  as  a  counter-balance,  leaving  the  mind 
in  a  state  of  suspended  judgment.  A  third  attitude  is  that  of 
radical  scepticism.  It  is  held  by  the  members  of  this  class  that 
all  the  data  of  the  Society  bearing  upon  the  subject  of  spiritism 
can  be  adequately  explained  on  the  basis  of  multiple  person- 
ality. The  exit  of  a  medium's  soul  out  of  the  body  and  the 
entrance  of  a  departed  spirit  in  its  place  is  said  to  be  nothing 
other  than  the  splitting  off  for  the  time  being  of  a  fragment  of 
the  medium's  normal  personality  and  causing  it  to  function 
in  an  abnormal  way.  This  role  it  very  soon  learns  to  play  with 
singular  skill.  Clues  of  knowledge  suitable  for  its  purposes 
which  are  carried  over  from  the  normal  state,  suggestions  re- 
ceived from  those  present  at  the  time  of  the  seance,  and  venture- 
some guesses  some  of  which  fit  while  many  do  not,  these  form 
the  stock  in  trade  of  the  split-off  personality  or  assumed  "Con- 
trol." Of  all  the  mediums  studied  by  the  Society,  none  has 
been  more  baffling  than  Mrs.  Piper  of  Boston.  Professor  James 
called  her  his  "white  crow,"  with  reference  to  the  whole  sub- 
ject of  spiritism.  While  fraud  has  been  repeatedly  discovered 
in  other  mediums,  no  fraud  has  as  yet  been  made  out  in  connec- 
tion with  the  seances  of  Mrs,  Piper.  A  careful  study  of  her 
case  has  been  made  of  late  by  Dr.  G.  Stanley  Hall  and  Dr.  Amy 
E.  Tanner.  The  results  of  their  investigations  have  appeared 
in  a  recent  book  by  Dr.  Tanner  (64).  The  book  is  a  wholesale 
slaughter  of  the  spiritistic  hypothesis.  It  seeks  to  explain  not 
only  Mrs.  Piper 's  case  but  also  the  whole  body  of  spiritistic  data 
gathered  by  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research  on  the  basis  of 
multiple  personality.     Naturally  enough,  the  book  has  called 


32  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

down  upon  its  authors  a  volley  of  criticism  from  certain  mem- 
bers of  the  Society.  What  effect  the  book  will  ultimately  have 
upon  this  whole  movement  yet  remains  to  be  seen.  It  is  hoped, 
however,  by  many  who  agree  with  its  interpretation  of  the  facts, 
that  it  will  serve,  at  least,  to  counter-balance  certain  extrava- 
gances which  have  manifested  themselves  in  connection  with 
this  study  of  spiritistic  phenomena. 

Taken  as  a  whole,  what  has  the  study  of  spiritism  done  by 
way  of  confirming  the  belief  in  immortality?  Its  chief  service 
has  been  to  call  attention  to  the  subject,  and  in  an  age  of  mate- 
rialistic tendencies  this  has  had  its  value,  no  doubt.  But  so  far 
as  furnishing  positive  evidence  of  immortality  is  concerned,  its 
results  are  of  a  doubtful  character  to  say  the  least.  And  what 
else  could  be  expected?  The  world  of  disincarnate  spirits  is 
rather  an  awkward  sphere  for  science  to  investigate.  It  is  a 
sufficiently  difficult  task  to  gather  valid  scientific  data  on  this 
mundane  world  of  ours,  but  to  collect  valid  scientific  data  from 
a  super-mundane  world,  and  have  it  transmitted  to  earth  through 
the  channel  of  a  pathological  personality,  seems  like  a  hopeless 
task  indeed.  And  further,  supposing  that  a  considerable  body 
of  trustworthy  scientists  should  succeed  in  gaining  what  to  them 
would  be  incontrovertible  evidence  of  communication  with  spirits, 
and  supposing  they  should  couch  their  findings  in  a  permanent 
literary  form,  how  much  weight  would  their  testimony  have  for 
the  generations  following  them,  by  way  of  settling  once  for  all 
the  fact  of  immortality?  Would  it  have  any  more  weight  than 
the  evidence  for  the  resurrection  of  Christ,  contained  in  the 
New  Testament,  has  for  the  average  scientist  to-day  ?  He  snaps 
his  finger  at  such  evidence.  To  him  it  is  a  case  of  establishing 
miracle  on  the  basis  of  human  testimony,  a  task  which  Hume 
convinced  most  of  the  scientific  world  years  ago  can  not  be 
accomplished.  Strange  conceit  this  is  of  the  scientist  that  he 
should  regard  his  own  word  as  of  so  much  more  value  than  that 
of  a  company  of  honest  fishermen  two  thousand  years  ago.  Free 
communication  with  disembodied  spirits  can  never  be  a  common- 
place  of  human  experience.  If  such  a  thing  is  possible,  and 
possible  only  through  certain  select  mediums,  then  it  must  ever 
remain  a  sweet  luxury  for  the  few,  and,  as  such,  an  extraordi- 
nary and  rather  miraculous  occurrence.  That  being  so,  it  can 
never  carry  with  it  the  weight  of  a  universally  convincing  proof 
of  human  survival,  according  to  the  verdict  of  science  itself.     We 


SPIDLE:    IMMORTALITY  33 

would  not  under  any  consideration  put  a  handicap  upon  scien- 
tific investigation  in  any  field,  but  it  does  seem  as  though  there 
must  be  a  better  way  for  a  noble  soul  to  build  up  its  assurance 
of  immortality  than  by  raking  among  the  pathological  abnor- 
malities of  multiple  personalities. 

So  far,  then,  the  scientific  grounds  for  a  belief  in  immortality 
are  on  about  the  same  footing  with  those  of  philosophy.  Neither 
one  is  conclusive.  While  there  are  certain  phenomena  which 
seem  to  point  in  the  direction  of  personal  survival,  there  are 
others  which  seem  to  point  just  as  definitely  in  the  opposite 
direction,  leaving  us,  from  a  scientific  point  of  view,  in  a  state 
of  suspended  judgment. 

3.     Religious  grounds. 

But  philosophy  and  science  are  not  the  only  points  of  view 
from  which  the  belief  in  an  after  life  may  be  considered.  In 
fact,  they  are  not  the  primary  standpoints  from  which  to  view 
this  subject.  In  the  last  analysis  the  question  of  immortality  is 
a  religious  question.  As  John  Fiske  has  said,  "it  must  ever 
remain  an  affair  of  religion  rather  than  of  science."  Scien- 
tifically we  may  never  be  able  to  demonstrate  the  fact  of  an  after 
life,  assuming  that  there  is  such  a  life.  And  yet,  the  rank  and 
file  of  humanity  ever  has  believed,  still  does  believe,  and  for 
aught  we  now  know  will  continue  to  believe  in  a  future  life, 
notwithstanding  the  negative  testimony  of  science.  The  reason 
for  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  belief  is  fundamentally 
motivated  by  considerations  which  are  essentially  religious.  And 
this  is  legitimate.  As  has  already  been  stated,  religion  has  its 
rightful  place  in  the  general  scheme  of  human  affairs.  And 
when  religion  is  pressed  to  its  ultimate  psychological  analysis  it 
is  found  to  concern  itself  chiefly  with  the  emotional  aspect  of 
man's  mental  life.  We  may  not  wholly  agree  with  Schleier- 
macher's  definition  of  religion  as  a  ''feeling  of  dependence,** 
and  yet  Schleiermacher  put  his  finger  on  the  right  place  when 
he  found  in  feeling  the  essence  of  religion.  Other  elements 
enter  into  it  of  necessity,  but  here  we  are  at  the  center.  As 
one  has  said,  ''Religion  is  the  meeting  of  spirit  with  spirit,  the 
flush  of  happiness,  the  thrill  of  satisfaction,  the  sense  of  peace, 
the  glad  realization  that  now  at  last  a  hunger,  keener  than 
physical  hunger,  has  been  appeased  by  the  heavenly  bread.  God 
and  the  soul  have  met,  and  in  the  shock  of  that  meeting  there 


34  JOURNAL  OP  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

has  come  to  the  soul  an  emotion  of  loving  fellowship  which  is 
the  very  heart  of  religion."  Of  course,  it  must  be  understood 
that  religion  has  to  do  with  cognition  as  well  as  with  emotion. 
The  preacher  struck  a  wrong  note,  when,  in  the  course  of  his 
sermon,  he  said:  "Few  things  have  done  more  harm  in  this 
world  than  thought.  Don't  put  me  down,  my  dear  friends,  as 
a  thinker,  put  me  down  as  a  believer."  The  audience  is  said 
to  have  remarked  afterward  that  the  preacher  had  placed  before 
them  a  very  unnecessary  precaution.  Such  an  attitude  is,  of 
course,  a  travesty  on  religion.  And  yet,  it  serves  to  show  by 
way  of  exaggeration  where  the  primary  interests  in  religion 
lie.  They  lie  not  in  the  rational  processes  of  cognition,  but  in 
the  affective  processes  of  the  emotions.  And  this  being  so,  we 
shall  find  on  close  investigation  that  the  belief  in  immortality, 
which  is  primarily  a  religious  belief,  finds  its  strongest  support, 
not  in  the  intellect  where  philosophy  and  science  move  and  have 
their  being,  but  in  the  affections  where  religion  moves  and  has 
its  being. 

Taking  the  Christian  religion,  which  is  pre-eminently  the 
religion  of  personal  immortality,  there  are  two  fundamental 
motivations  to  the  belief  in  a  future  life.  One  is  the  attitude 
of  Jesus  himself  toward  the  future,  and  the  other  is  the  doc- 
trine of  his  resurrection.  Which  of  these  two  has  had  the 
greater  influence  in  the  past  it  would  be  difficult  to  say.  Pos- 
sibly the  balance  has  held  a  fairly  horizontal  position.  But 
to-day  there  is  a  slight  inclination  on  the  side  of  the  former. 
The  deeper  men's  lives  become  rooted  in  the  conviction  of  a 
personal  God,  to  whom  they  are  related  in  a  vital  and  filial  way, 
the  less  do  they  look  for  objective  proofs  of  immortality,  and 
the  more  do  they  come  to  rest  the  whole  burden  of  their  faith 
upon  that  inner  sense  of  assurance  which  results  from  a  loving 
and  trustful  attitude  toward  God.  And  this,  we  are  told,  is  the 
true  Christian  ground  on  which  the  belief  in  immortality  should 
ever  rest.  It  was  the  one  ground  on  which  Jesus'  belief  in 
immortality  rested.  While  it  is  true  that  he  did  at  one  time 
argue  for  immortality  with  the  unbelieving  Sadducees  on  the 
ground  of  the  teachings  of  the  old  Testament,  yet  he  did  so  for 
their  sakes  and  not  for  his  own.  His  own  belief  had  its  roots 
not  in  any  book  but  in  a  great  experience,  the  sense  of  Sonship. 
The  fact  of  an  eternal  and  immortal  God  to  whom  he  was  related 
by  an  indissoluble  tie  of  filial  affection  was  one  of  the  most  real 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  35 

factors  in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus.  His  whole  life  may  be 
looked  upon  as  the  unfolding  of  this  conviction,  and  his  whole 
attitude  toward  the  future  was  the  blossom  of  this  conviction. 
When  he  spoke  of  the  future,  it  was  his  "Father's  house"  to 
which  he  was  going  and  to  which  he  would  ultimately  lead  his 
people.  He  had  no  long  drawn  out  arguments,  based  upon 
logical  deductions,  to  offer  in  support  of  his  belief.  The  future 
life  was  to  him  as  real  as  the  present  life,  and  all  because  he 
was  the  Son  of  an  immortal  Father,  whose  immortal  life  he 
shared.  And  ultimately,  it  is  said,  here  is  where  the  Chris- 
tian 's  faith  in  immortality  should  ever  rest,  not  so  much  in  the 
objective  evidence  of  the  resurrection  of  Christ,  valuable  as 
that  may  be,  but  in  the  subjective  evidence  of  God's  life  in  the 
soul.  We  are  to  take  our  stand  where  Jesus  took  his  stand,  not 
upon  logic,  but  upon  the  experience  of  the  heart  in  its  relation 
to  God.  Am  I  God's  child,  have  I  the  divine  life  in  me?  If 
so,  I  am  the  immortal  child  of  an  immortal  Father,  and  in  the 
sweet  consciousness  of  this  fact  my  heart  should  rest. 

IV.     Present  Status  of  the  Belief. 

Having  thus  outlined  the  different  forms  which  the  belief 
in  immortality  has  assumed,  the  different  theories  which  have 
been  advanced  to  account  for  its  origin,  and  the  different  grounds 
on  which  it  has  rested,  we  are  now  ready  to  consider  the  present 
status  of  the  belief  as  determined  by  our  own  empirical  study. 
No  sweeping  deductions  can  be  made  from  our  limited  survey. 
The  results  obtained  are  suggestive  rather  than  exhaustive. 
In  order  to  ascertain  approximately  how  this  subject  of  an  after 
life  is  lying  to-day  in  the  minds  of  intelligent,  thinking  people, 
the  following  list  of  questions  was  drawn  up  and  distributed 
over  a  wide  area  both  in  America  and  Canada. 

1.  Do  you  believe  in  man's  immortality  I  If  not  possessed  of  a  belief 
in  immortality,  do  you  hold  it  as  a  hope? 

2.  What  kind  of  immortality  do  you  believe  in,  personal  or  cosmic  or 
merely  influential? 

3.  Are  all  men  immortal?     If  not,  who  are? 

4.  What  are  your  reasons  for  believing  in,  or  not  believing  in,  man's 
immortality? 

5.  What  is  your  conception  of  the  state  of  the  after  life?  Is  it  a 
mere  continuation  of  the  present  state  or  is  it  different? 

6.  Did  the  question  of  immortality  in  any  way  lead  to  your  ''conver- 
iion"  or  acceptance  of  the  Christian  faith,  in  case  you  have  accepted  it? 


36  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

7.  Have  your  views  on  immortality  undergone  any  radical  change  with 
the  lapse  of  years?     If  so,  when,  and  in  what  respects? 

8.  If  given  your  preference,  which  would  you  choose,  immortality  or 
annihilation?     Why? 

9.  What  influence  has  your  belief  in  immortality  upon  your  own  con- 
duct, character,  and  life? 

10.  In  your  judgment,  how  did  the  belief  in  immortality  originate  in 
the  race? 

11.  In  your  judgment,  has  the  race  been  profited  or  not  by  its  belief  in 
immortality?     If  profited,  how?     If  not,  why? 

12.  In  your  judgment,  is  the  belief  in  immortality  increasing  or  decreas- 
ing in  the  race?     If  either,  why  and  among  what  particular  class  or  classes? 

13.  In  your  judgment,  has  the  belief  in  immortality  acted  in  any  way 
as  a  cause  of  or  as  a  preventive  against  suicide? 

14.  In  your  judgment,  what  effect  would  a  complete  annihilation  of 
the  belief  in  immortality  have  upon  the  race,  directly  and  ultimately? 

15.  Has  the  modern  pulpit  changed  its  message  regarding  immortality? 
If  so,  how,  and  with  what  effect? 

16.  What  weight  do  you  attach  to  the  general  belief  in  immortality  as 
an  evidence  for  immortality? 

17.  What  was  the  attitude  of  Jesus  toward  immortality,  and  what 
weight  do  you  give  to  his  attitude? 

18.  What  value  do  you  attach  to  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of 
Christ  as  an  evidence  for  immortality? 

19.  Is  science  to-day  in  conflict  with  a  rational  belief  in  personal  im- 
mortality?    If  so,  how? 

20.  In  your  judgment,  can  the  fact  of  immortality,  if  it  is  a  fact,  ever 
be  established  on  scientific  grounds?     If  not,  why  not? 

21.  Is  a  belief  in  immortality  necessitated  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution? 
If  so,  why?     If  not,  why? 

22.  Is  a  belief  in  immortality  necessitated  by  the  doctrine  of  the  conser- 
vation of  energy?     Why? 

23.  In  your  judgment,  has  ''THE  SOCIETY  FOR  PSYCHICAL  EE- 
SEARCH^'  in  England  and  America  made  any  contribution  toward  a 
solution  of  the  problem  of  immortality?     If  so,  what? 

24.  Should  children  be  taught  adult  views  of  the  after  life  or  be  left  to 
frame  their  own  views  of  it? 

25.  Does  the  desire  to  be  reunited  again  with  loved  ones  act  in  any  way 
as  a  spur  to  your  belief  or  hope  in  immortality? 

26.  Has  the  thought  of  "helP*  in  any  way  influenced  your  life? 

27.  What  is  your  age? 

28.  Is  your  sex  male  or  female? 

29.  What  is  your  occupation? 

30.  Any  remarks  or  suggestions. 

The  parties  to  whom  copies  of  these  questions  were  sent  were 
in  most  cases  the  writer's  own  personal  acquaintances  from  whom 
he  had  every  reason  to  expect  serious  and  honest  answers.  One 
hundred   and  seventy  such   answers  were  secured.     Of  these, 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  37 

forty-six  belonged  to  the  High  School  level,  twenty  to  the  college 
level,  and  one  hundred  and  four  to  the  professional  level  which 
included  lawyers,  physicians,  teachers,  preachers,  etc. 

We  shall  deal  with  the  professional  class  first.  Of  this  group 
seventy-five  believed  in  personal  and  seven  in  cosmic  immor- 
tality. Thirteen  rejected  the  idea  of  a  future  life  altogether. 
The  only  immortality  for  man,  they  held,  is  that  of  influence. 
Nine  were  uncertain  as  to  the  kind  of  future  life  they  believed 
in,  but  vaguely  hoped  for  a  continued  existence  of  some  sort. 

Fifty  believed  that  all  human  beings  are  immortal.  Fifteen 
affirmed  that  only  a  part  of  humanity  will  survive  death,  that 
part  being  "the  good"  and  "believers  in  Christ."  Twenty-six 
were  in  doubt  in  regard  to  the  matter,  and  thirteen  affirmed 
that  none  are  immortal. 

As  to  the  reasons  given  for  the  belief  in  a  future  life,  the 
teaching  of  the  Bible  was  named  fifty-three  times,  the  general 
belief  in  immortality  thirty-four  times,  the  incompleteness  of 
this  life  eleven  times,  the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  energy 
as  applied  to  personality  five  times,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  or 
of  the  conservation  of  values  three  times,  the  influence  of  early 
training  seven  times,  the  influence  of  the  dead  twice,  the  law  of 
the  fitness  of  things  twice,  boundless  aspiration,  dread  of  ex- 
tinction, and  simple  faith  were  each  named  once. 

Fifty  reported  themselves  as  having  experienced  no  impor- 
tant change  of  view,  while  fifty-four  reported  radical  changes 
of  view.  The  character  of  the  changes  indicated  were  a  turn- 
ing away  from  a  belief  in  inherent  to  a  belief  in  conditional 
immortality;  a  turning  away  from  a  gross  material  conception 
of  an  after  life  to  a  more  refined  spiritual  conception  of  unfet- 
tered psychical  activity;  a  turning  away  from  a  belief  in  only 
human  survival  to  a  belief  in  the  survival  of  all  animal  life ;  a 
turning  away  from  the  conception  of  a  heaven  of  mere  song  to 
a  heaven  of  service ;  a  turning  away  from  a  definite  belief  to  a 
rather  vague  hope ;  and  a  turning  away  from  all  belief  and  hope 
to  a  state  of  utter  disbelief.  The  particular  time  in  life  at 
which  these  changes  occurred  were : 

* '  After  reading  the  Origin  of  Species  and  the  Descent  of  Man ;  * '  '  *  after 
my  second  year  in  College  as  the  result  of  my  philosophical  and  psycholog- 
ical studies ;  * '  <  <  after  my  graduate  work  in  science ; ' '  ' '  after  my  theolog- 
ical and  psychological  studies; '*  *' during  early  adolescence;*'  ''at  the  age 
of  twenty-five;"  and  ''after  a  careful  study  of  the  Scriptures.'* 


38  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

One  said  the  doctrine  of  immortality  had  been  an  important 
factor  in  helping  to  upset  his  faith  in  Christianity  as  a  whole. 
His  case  is  so  extraordinary  that  I  feel  constrained  to  note  it 
somewhat  in  detail.  He  is  an  eminent  physician,  fifty-one 
years  of  age.     I  quote  his  own  words: 

'^I  believed  in  immortality  up  to  the  age  of  fifteen.  By  twenty-three  I 
had  become  somewhat  doubtful,  as  my  belief  in  the  Bible  as  the  'Word  of 
God'  was  fading  out,  but,  as  I  had  never  looked  closely  into  the  matter, 
I  kept  my  judgment  in  suspense.  At  a  later  age,  I  developed  consumption 
of  the  lungs  and  became  fully  persuaded  that  I  had  only  a  few  months  to 
live.  I  then  resolved  to  attempt  to  settle  the  matter,  and,  as  I  felt  that  the 
belief  in  immortality  was  bound  up  with  that  of  the  inspiration  of  the 
Bible,  I  began  my  investigation  at  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  in  connec- 
tion with  Adam  Clarke's  Commentaries.  With  every  chapter  my  belief  in 
inspiration  faded.  I  did,  for  a  short  time,  try  to  persuade  myself  that 
Jesus  was  really  divine  and  was  sent  by  a  beneficent  Deity  to  teach  the 
human  race,  but  further  study  forced  me  to  give  up  the  New  Testament 
also.  With  the  belief  in  Christianity  as  a  divine  system  went  the  doctrine 
of  immortality.  Nearly  thirty  years  more  of  reading  science,  old  theology 
and  new  theology,  together  with  such  casual  thought  as  I  have  been  able  to 
employ,  have  only  confirmed  the  conclusions  framed  then.  I  would,  how- 
ever, if  given  my  choice  prefer  immortality  to  annihilation,  provided  I  could 
be  assured  against  excessive  pain  and  monotony.  My  reason  is  that  there 
Is  so  much  more  that  I  want  to  know.  I  would  like  to  spend — not  eternity 
perhaps — but  a  very,  very  long  time  examining  into  the  mysteries  of  the 
universe. ' ' 

There  were  other  returns  in  which  the  changes  in  belief  indi- 
cated were  just  as  radical  as  this,  but  the  case  of  this  man 
seemed  especially  significant  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  read- 
justment of  his  belief  took  place  as  a  result  of  a  careful  inves- 
tigation of  the  Scriptures  and  that  at  a  time  when  death 
seemed  near  at  hand. 

Ninety-five  preferred  immortality.     The  reasons  given  were: 

''For  the  joy  of  loving  and  serving; "  "for  the  sake  of  the  improved  con- 
ditions expected ; "  < ' for  the  sake  of  a  life  of  harmony  with  God ; "  "be- 
cause of  my  repugnance  of  the  idea  of  annihilation;"  "because  life  is 
sweet ; "  * < from  a  desire  to  solve  life 's  enigmas ; "  "in  order  to  complete 
this  incomplete  life ;  ^ '  ' '  for  the  opportunity  of  progress ; ' '  and  ' '  for  the 
joy  of  living  and  working  without  tiring."  Two  preferred  annihilation, 
one  giving  as  his  reason  the  fact  that  "annihilation  is  nature's  order  to 
which  I  cordially  submit." 

Twelve  had  no  preference,  except  to  prefer  such  as  should 
be,  whether  annihilation  or  immortality. 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  39 

As  to  the  influence  which  this  belief  has  upon  character  and 
life,  eighty-two  said  that  it  has  a  beneficial  influence.  The  ex- 
pressions used  were : 

**It  inspires  me  to  altruistic  service;'*  **it  makes  life  worth  living;'* 
*  *  it  makes  me  desire  to  grow  like  God  in  character ; "  * '  it  restrains  me 
from  evil ;"  "it  inspires  progress  in  personal  holiness ; ' '  *  *  it  holds  me  to 
the  right ;'*  "it  gives  dignity  and  range  to  my  life  and  character ;"  "it 
stimulates  fidelity  to  duty;"  and  "it  gives  my  life  hope  and  purpose.*' 

Seventeen  said  the  belief  had  no  influence  upon  their  life. 
Five  were  unable  to  tell  whether  it  had  or  had  not  an  influ- 
ence upon  them.  As  to  its  racial  influence  ninety-three  affirmed 
that  the  race  has  been  profited  by  the  belief.  Nine  were  in 
doubt  in  this  respect.  One  expressed  the  opinion  that  the 
belief  has  been  a  positive  hindrance  to  the  race  in  that  it  has 
diverted  man's  attention  from  the  proper  business  of  life,  which 
is  the  material  and  moral  improvement  of  this  present  world, 
and  has  focused  his  attention  upon  another  world  which  he 
knows  nothing  about  and  will  never  reach.  One  said  the  belief 
was  both  a  help  and  a  hindrance  to  humanity.  In  the  case  of 
some  it  inspired  hope  and  progress,  while  in  the  case  of  others 
it  fostered  depression  and  even  insanity  by  holding  up  before 
the  mind  the  gruesome  picture  of  loved  ones  roasting  in  a  hell 
of  endless  torment. 

Twenty-seven  held  that  the  belief  is  decreasing.  There  was 
pretty  general  agreement  that  this  decrease  is  found  principally 
among  the  educated  classes.  One,  however,  was  of  the  opinion 
that  the  decrease  is  confined  chiefly  to  the  religiously  liberal 
classes  of  Northern  Europe  who  are  temperamentally  shallow 
and  cynical  in  their  mental  characteristics.  As  to  the  causes 
of  this  decline,  it  was  thought  to  be  brought  about : 

"As  the  result  of  scientific  study,  which  demands  the  evidence  of  the 
senses  as  over  against  that  of  mere  faith ; "  "as  the  result  of  the  doctrine 
of  evolution;"  "as  the  result  of  the  psychological  fact  of  the  correlation 
betwen  mind  and  brain ; "  "as  a  result  of  the  teachings  of  pagan  reli- 
gions ; ' '  and  "  as  a  result  of  the  present-day  greed  for  gold. '  *  Thirty,  on 
the  other  hand,  said  that  the  belief  is  increasing.  Some  distributed  this 
increase  among  all  classes,  others  confined  it  to  the  educated,  others  said 
it  is  increasing  wherever  Christianity  is  being  taught,  and  one  made  bold  to 
af&rm  that  "'It  is  increasing  among  all  classes,  except  a  few  college  men 
and  a  few  fool  preachers." 

Eleven  were  of  the  opinion  that  the  belief  is  relatively 
stationary. 


40  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

With  regard  to  suicide,  fifty-seven  held  that  the  belief  in 
immortality  has  acted  as  a  preventive.  As  evidence  of  this,  it 
was  cited  that  there  are  few  suicides  among  Roman  Catholics, 
who  as  a  body  hold  firmly  to  the  doctrine  of  immortality;  that 
the  greatest  number  of  suicides  are  found  in  non-religious  com- 
munities where  the  belief  in  an  after  life  is  not  held,  as  is  shown 
by  a  study  of  French  and  German  suicides;  and  that  religious 
workers  among  persons  of  suicidal  tendencies  are  at  one  in 
their  testimony  to  the  great  restraining  power  which  this  belief 
has  over  persons  contemplating  the  act  of  suicide.  One  teacher 
was  very  emphatic  on  this  point.  He  said:  ''It  is  indeed  a 
powerful  preventive,  as  I  know  from  personal  experience  in 
dealing  with  persons  of  suicidal  tendencies. ''  One  called  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  among  primitive  peoples  this  belief  has 
acted  as  a  cause  of  suicide.  Firmly  believing  in  the  reality  of 
a  future  life,  these  people  rushed  on  by  self-inflicted  death  to 
enter  into  that  life.  Twelve  said  that  the  belief  acted  both 
as  a  cause  and  a  preventive,  citing  examples  like  those  given 
above.  Twelve  expressed  the  opinion  that  the  belief  has  had 
no  influence  either  for  or  against  suicide,  suicide  being  the 
result  of  a  pathological  condition  of  mind  with  which  the  belief 
in  a  future  life  has  no  connection  whatever. 

Eighty-five  were  of  the  opinion  that  an  annihilation  of  the 
belief  would  work  untold  harm  to  the  race,  both  immediately 
and  ultimately.     The  particular  lines  of  harm  indicated  were : 

''It  would  lower  the  value  now  set  upon  human  life  and  thus  cause  a 
reversion  to  the  animal  state;"  *'it  would  dull  aspiration;"  ''it  would 
take  away  hope  and  destroy  man's  peace  of  mind; "  "it  would  check  spirit- 
ual development;"  "it  would  usher  in  the  reign  of  unrestrained  immor- 
ality;" "it  would  increase  suicide  amazingly;"  "it  would  destroy  the 
moral  and  religious  sanctions  that  now  sustain  the  race;"  and  "it  would 
obliterate  all  altruism  and  spiritual  aspiration."  \ 

One  replied  with  the  following  quotation  from  the  late 
Senator  Hoar: 

"No  race  or  nation  will  ever  be  great  or  will  long  maintain  greatness 
unless  it  holds  fast  to  the  faith  in  a  living  God,  in  a  beneficent  Providence, 
and  in  a  personal  immortality.  To  man  as  to  nation,  every  gift  of  noblest 
origin  is  breathed  upon  by  this  hope's  perpetual  breath.  "Where  this  faith 
lives  are  found  courage,  manhood,  power.  Where  this  faith  dies,  courage, 
manhood,  and  power  die  with  it." 

Two  expressed  the  opinion  that  an  annihilation  of  the  belief 
in  a  future  life  would  prove  a  blessing  to  humanity  in  that  it 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  41 

would  give  greater  emphasis  to  the  worth  of  this  present  life 
and  thus  elevate  the  general  moral  tone  of  society.  Both,  how- 
ever, were  of  the  opinion  that  the  belief  should  be  destroyed 
gradually  rather  than  suddenly.  Three  said  that  an  annihi- 
lation of  this  belief  would  have  no  important  effect,  either 
immediately  or  ultimately. 

The  relation  of  the  modern  pulpit  to  the  belief  in  an  after 
life  was  variously  estimated.  Sixty-two  were  agreed  that  the 
pulpit  has  changed  its  message  concerning  the  future.  The 
lines  of  change  indicated  were  varied.  Some  held  that  the 
present-day  pulpit  has  turned  very  generally  from  a  belief  in 
personal  to  a  belief  in  cosmic  immortality.  Others,  that  it 
has  turned  from  personal  to  influential  immortality.  And  still 
others  held  that  it  is  rapidly  moving  toward  an  acceptance  of 
the  doctrine  of  reincarnation.  There  was  pretty  general  agree- 
ment, however,  that  the  pulpit  of  today  is  saying  less  about  an 
after  life  than  the  pulpit  of  earlier  days  had  to  say  about  it, 
and  that,  when  it  is  spoken  of,  the  idea  of  hell  is  almost,  if  not 
quite,  ignored.  Most  of  this  class  of  respondents  were  of  the 
impression  that  this  change  is  for  the  better  in  that  it  leads  to 
the  acceptance  and  formation  of  a  good  life  from  higher  motives 
than  that  of  fear.  A  few,  however,  said  that  this  change  is  for 
the  worse  in  that  the  pulpit  is  failing  to  use  the  motive  of  fear 
which,  they  said,  has  been  the  great  moral  educator  of  the  race. 
One  of  this  class  expressed  the  belief  that  the  reason  why  the 
pulpit  of  to-day  is  either  silent  altogether  or  else  exceedingly 
cautious  in  its  utterances  about  the  future  is  because  both 
preacher  and  people  alike  are  at  the  present  time  utterly  at 
sea  on  the  whole  subject.  Twelve  were  of  the  opinion  that  the 
modern  pulpit  has  not  changed. 

Seventy-seven  said  that  Jesus  assumed  the  fact  of  immor- 
tality, and  that  his  attitude  carries  with  it  the  greatest  weight 
possible  as  an  evidence  for  the  reality  of  an  after  life  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  he  was  the  most  spiritually  minded  teacher 
that  the  world  has  ever  known.  Fifteen,  however,  took  the 
opposite  view  and  said  that  the  attitude  of  Jesus  carried  no 
more  weight  than  that  of  any  other  good  man.  Two,  in  fact, 
said  that  his  attitude  carried  less  weight  than  that  of  an  intel- 
ligent scholar  of  to-day.     To  quote  their  own  words: 

"The  testimony  of  Jesus  to  an  after  life  is  of  no  more  value  than  that 
of  any  other  man  of  his  day,  and  is  not  to  be  compared  with  that  of  a 


42  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

modern  scientist  of  good  standing •''  ^'  Jesus  imbibed  the  belief  in  immor- 
tality from  his  environment  and  was  not  in  as  good  a  position  as  we  are 
today  to  judge  of  its  truth.'' 

Twelve  said  they  had  no  idea  whatever  what  Jesus'  attitude 
was  toward  the  belief  in  an  after  life. 

In  regard  to  the  doctrine  of  Christ's  resurrection,  seventy- 
six  held  it  to  be  the  crowning  evidence  of  a  future  life.  A  few 
others  were  inclined  to  attach  less  evidential  value  to  the  story 
of  the  resurrection,  regarding  it  merely  as  a  co-ordinate  factor 
in  the  general  group  of  evidences  for  an  after  life.  All  of 
these  seventy-six  respondents,  however,  were  at  one  in  their 
belief  that  the  resurrection  of  Christ  is  a  well  authenticated 
fact  of  history.  Fifteen,  on  the  other  hand,  said  that  the  story 
of  the  resurrection  is  not  an  established  fact  of  history,  and, 
therefore,  carries  no  weight  as  an  evidence  for  immortality. 
Two  physicians  replied  in  substantially  the  same  terms,  the 
exact  words  of  one  being,  ''The  teaching  concerning  the  resur- 
rection of  Christ  is  by  no  means  an  established  fact.  It  is 
utterly  lacking  in  historical  confirmation."  One  man  said, 
''Even  if  a  physical  resurrection  did  take  place,  it  would  by 
no  means  prove  immortality."  One  scientist  of  wide  repute 
said,  "While  I  believe  in  personal  immortality  yet  I  do  not 
base  my  belief  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  Christ. 
I  regard  Hume's  argument  as  never  having  been  answered." 
Hume's  argument,  as  we  all  know,  was  that  "Nothing  that  is 
of  less  frequent  occurrence  than  the  falsity  of  human  testi- 
mony can  be  proved  by  testimony."  Thirteen  said  that  they 
had  never  given  the  story  of  the  resurrection  any  thought,  and 
were  not  in  a  position,  therefore,  to  say  what  bearing  it  had 
upon  the  belief  in  an  after  life. 

Fifty-five  were  of  the  opinion  that  science  is  not  in  conflict 
with  a  rational  belief  in  personal  immortality.  Fifteen  took 
the  opposite  view.  One  psychologist,  of  international  reputa- 
tion, said,  "It  is,  I  believe,  impossible  to  disprove  personal 
immortality  by  scientific  reasoning,  because  of  the  lack  of  data 
one  way  or  the  other.  I  think,  however,  that  science  makes  it 
extremely  improbable."    An  eminent  physician  says: 

"Science,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  finds  no  evidence  upon  which  to  found 
a  rational  belief  in  personal  immortality.  Since  the  scientific  spirit  teaches 
us  to  believe  only  those  things  which  are  proved,  to  disbelieve  those  which 


SPiDLE:   IMMORTALITY  43 

are  disproved,  and  to  hold  our  judgment  in  suspense  in  regard  to  other 
matters,  we  must  be  content  to  leave,  at  least,  the  doctrine  of  personal 
immortality  in  doubt." 

Thirty-four  had  no  idea  how  science  stands  related  to  the 
belief  in  personal  immortality. 

As  to  the  possibility  of  science  proving  the  reality  of  an 
after  life,  granted  that  there  is  such  a  life,  fifteen  believed 
such  a  thing  possible.  One  scientist  of  note  said,  *'No  man 
can  foretell  what  science  will  be  able  to  do."  Another  scien- 
tist said,  "Science  has  already  so  far  outstripped  in  its  dis- 
coveries the  expectations  of  a  generation  ago  that  it  would  not 
be  at  all  surprising  if  in  this  matter  of  an  after  life  it  should 
also  outstrip  our  present  expectations  and  lay  bare  to  us  facts 
which  now  seem  utterly  beyond  the  limit  of  its  apparent  sphere. ' ' 
Sixty,  on  the  other  hand,  were  of  the  opinion  that  science  can 
never  establish  the  fact  of  an  after  life,  granting  the  reality  of 
such  a  life.  The  grounds  upon  which  their  convictions  were 
based  can  all  be  summed  up  in  one  sentence,  namely,  science 
can  never  prove  the  existence  of  a  future  life  because  it  has 
no  data  upon  which  to  work  and  can  obtain  no  data,  for  the 
reason  that  science  deals  only  with  the  experiential  facts  of 
man's  present  life  while  immortality  lies  entirely  outside  the 
sphere  of  such  experience. 

Forty-one  regarded  the  doctrine  of  evolution  as  lending  no 
support  whatever  to  the  belief  in  an  after  life.  To  quote  the 
words  of  one,  ''The  doctrine  of  evolution  argues  more  for  mor- 
tality than  it  does  for  immortality,  for  if  the  lower  species  are 
mortal,  as  we  know  they  are,  why  not  the  higher  species,  includ- 
ing man  himself."     A  prominent  physician  says: 

**The  doctrine  of  evolution  appears  to  me  to  oppose  a  belief  in  personal 
immortality.  Individual  plants  and  animals,  species,  races,  nations,  planets, 
stars,  systems,  and  now  it  seems  perhaps  even  the  chemical  elements,  arise, 
grow  old,  and  die.  The  elements  of  which  they  are  composed  live  on  and 
are  reincarnated  in  other  forms,  but  that  which  distinguished  them — their 
individuality — disappears.  Why  should  we  expect  an  exception  to  be  made 
in  favor  of  one,  even  the  highest,  species  of  animals?" 

With  minor  variations,  this  was  the  line  of  reasoning  followed 
by  all  of  those  indicated  above.  Opposed  to  them  stood  twenty- 
eight  who  regarded  the  doctrine  of  evolution  as  furnishing 
rather  strong  presumptive  evidence  in  favor  of  personal  immor- 
tality.    The  gist  of  their  position  has  already  been  given  under 


44  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  head  of  'Hhe  conservatism  of  values"  in  discussing  the 
scientific  grounds  of  the  belief. 

In  like  manner  did  opinions  differ  as  to  the  evidential  value 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  energy.  Thirty  affirmed 
that  it  has  no  value  as  an  evidence  for  personal  immortality 
but  that  it  does  favor  the  idea  of  cosmic  survival.  Says  one, 
**Is  my  mind  'energy'  or  some  manifestation  of  it?  If  so,  I 
would  expect  it  to  live  on  after  death  but  not  in  the  form  of  my 
personality.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I  believe  that  mind  is  as  inde- 
structible as  energy  or  matter."  Another  says,  "Only  the 
imagination  of  a  protagonist  could  detect  any  analogy  here." 
Another  says,  "If  the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  energy 
furnished  any  support  to  the  idea  of  personal  immortality  then 
every  living  creature  from  time  immemorial  to  time  immemorial 
must  be  immortal."  Another  says,  "Life  and  energy  are  not 
in  the  same  category,  so  that  the  conservation  of  the  one  by  no 
means  argues  for  the  conservation  of  the  other."  Twenty-nine 
took  the  opposite  view  and  said  that  the  doctrine  of  the  con- 
servation of  energy  does  support  a  belief  in  personal  immor- 
tality. In  fact,  one  prominent  scientist  gave  this  as  the  only 
ground  of  her  belief  in  personal  immortality,  "the  doctrine  of 
the  conservation  of  energy  as  applied  to  personality." 

Forty-eight  were  of  the  opinion  that  "The  Society  for  Psy- 
chical Research"  has  made  no  contribution  whatever  toward  a 
solution  of  the  problem  of  immortality.  Two  believed  that  it 
has  done  something  for  the  belief  by  calling  general  attention 
to  the  subject.  Eight  took  the  opposite  ground  and  said  that 
this  Society  has  made  a  most  invaluable  contribution  in  that  it 
has  established  beyond  all  reasonable  doubt  the  validity  of 
spirit-communication. 

Sixty-one  favored  the  idea  of  children  being  taught  adult 
views  of  immortality.  Thirty-one  objected  to  this.  The  rea- 
sons given  were  that: 

* '  Children  are  shrewd  enough  to  frame  their  own  views,  which  they  do ;  * ' 
'*it  is  wrong  to  inculcate  views  into  a  child's  mind  which  may  later  have 
to  be  repudiated.  Teach  only  those  things  to  a  child  which  are  known  to 
be  true  and  which  the  child  will  never  have  occasion  to  repudiate,  and  let 
all  debatable  matters  like  that  of  a  future  life  take  care  of  themselves ; ' ' 
*^  children  should  not  have  adult  views  of  religious  matters  thrust  upon 
them  but  should  be  given  the  Bible  and  allowed  to  frame  their  own  views 
therefrom ;"  ' '  it  is  better  for  the  child  not  to  force  into  its  mind  adult 
views  upon  any  subject  but  rather  to  guide  its  processes  in  the  framing  of 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  45 

its  own  views ; ' '  and  "it  is  of  much  greater  importance  to  teach  the  child 
how  to  obtain  immortality  than  to  attempt  to  teach  it  about  immortality. ' ' 

Twelve  were  in  doubt  as  to  whether  children  should  or  should 
not  be  taught  adult  views  of  an  after  life. 

It  was  acknowledged  by  fifty-nine  that  the  desire  to  be 
reunited  to  loved  ones  acted  as  a  spur  to  their  belief  in  a  future 
life.     Two  couched  their  sentiments  in  the  following  phrases: 

' '  I  long  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand ; "  * '  I  would  like  to 
see  my  mother,  God  grant  that  I  may  go  to  her."  Here  I 
should  add  the  case  of  a  young  lawyer  from  whom  I  obtained 
the  following  statement.  I  had  given  him  a  copy  of  our  ques- 
tionnaire some  months  before  this,  with  a  promise  on  his  part  to 
fill  it  out  and  return  it  to  me.  Months  passed  by  and  the 
syllabus  was  not  returned.  One  day  he  came  to  me  with  this 
statement : 

"1  am  sorry  to  say  I  have  never  been  able  to  fill  out  your  syllabus.  I 
took  it  home,  laid  it  on  the  shelf  in  the  dining  room,  and  every  day  took  it 
down  and  looked  over  the  questions  and  talked  them  over  with  my  wife 
while  engaged  in  the  noon  meal.  Honestly,  I  have  worn  out  that  sheet  of 
paper  handling  it  over  and  looking  at  the  questions,  but  I  have  not  an- 
swered one  of  them  and  I  cannot  answer  them.  When  I  try  to  reason  this 
matter  out  on  the  basis  of  logic  I  say  to  myself,  of  course  there  is  no 
future  life.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  my  father  died  a  few  years  ago  and 
I  cannot  but  believe  that  I  shall  see  him  again.  That  is  how  I  think  and 
feel,  and,  if  you  can  reconcile  that  contradiction  you  know  what  my  belief 
in  immortality  is.'* 

With  regard  to  the  belief  in  "Hell,"  fifty-five  said  that  it 
never  had  any  influence  over  their  life.  Forty  affirmed  that 
it  had.  A  few  specified  as  to  the  exact  nature- of  this  influence. 
One  said,  "the  thought  of  hell  has  had  an  influence  for  good 
over  my  life  ever  since  I  can  remember."  Another  said,  "the 
thought  of  hell  hindered  me  from  joining  the  church  for  a 
year  or  two."  A  third  said,  "for  a  time  the  thought  of  hell 
upset  my  faith  in  everything  and  caused  me  much  misery." 
And  another  said,  "only  as  a  child  did  the  thought  of  hell  have 
any  influence  over  my  life,  and  then  it  introduced  into  my 
experience  an  element  of  tragedy  which  was  entirely  needless 
and  which  interfered  for  a  time  with  both  my  mental  and 
moral  development." 

Some  of  the  "Remarks"  appended  to  our  returns  were  of 
considerable  significance.     One  psychologist  of  wide  repute  says : 


46  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

''If  I  should  try  to  sum  up  my  views  in  general,  I  should  say  that  the 
whole  question  is  one  that  has  become  a  side  issue  in  my  life, — one  on  which 
I  do  not  hold  any  very  vital  opinions,  such  as  I  do  have  being  rather  in  the 
negative.  I  hold  them  lightly  and  in  a  way  to  be  somewhat  easily  changed, 
I  suppose,  by  scientific  evidence  if  any  were  forthcoming,  or  by  those  funda- 
mental emotional  determinants  (which  I  think  are  at  the  root  of  the  belief 
in  those  that  hold  it  strongly)  if  any  should  rise  in  my  own  life. ' ' 

Another  says: 

''My  impression  is  that  all  these  questions  refer  to  reason,  omitting  the 
great  field  of  feeling,  which  may  be  just  as  meaningful  as  that  which  our 
poor  intellects  can  comprehend.  The  only  incontestable  argument  for  im- 
mortality, incontestable  because  unanswerable,  is  the  argument  of  the  heart. 
When  I  see  injustice,  suffering,  sorrows  of  parting,  and  incompleteness  in 
this  life,  my  heart  longs  to  give  those  who  desire  it  another  life  where  all 
may  be  righted.  This  is  best  expressed  in  Browning's  Saul.  But,  as  I  said 
above,  my  reason  works  otherwise,  and  to  it  the  immortality  of  influence, 
as  set  forth  in  George  Eliot's  Choir  Invisible,  seems  most  desirable." 

Another  says: 

' '  I  regret  to  say  that  in  my  present  state  of  mind  I  cannot  give  a  very 
satisfactory  response  to  the  questions  set.  If  I  were  to  reply  now,  it  would 
be  from  the  standpoint  of  a  pretty  rank  agnostic,  and  you  know  very  well 
what  the  character  of  such  a  reply  would  be.  It  may  be  that  this  is  only 
a  temporary  state  with  me.  I  hope  it  is,  for  I  am  getting  very  little  com- 
fort out  of  it." 

The  Mayor  of  a  large  city  writes : 

"Your  circular  was  duly  received  and  I  have  read  it  over  several  times. 
I  did  not  realize  before  how  limited  my  knowledge  was  along  the  lines  you 
suggest.  There  are  so  few  items  in  the  list  of  questions  that  I  could 
answer  with  satisfaction  to  myself  that  I  do  not  feel  justified  in  answering 
even  the  more  simple  questions.  Candidly,  if  I  could  satisfactorily  answer 
those  questions,  I  ought  to  be  able  to  write  after  my  name  all  the  letters 
that  Clark  University  gives  for  degrees." 

Turning  now  to  our  College  and  High  School  returns,  we  find 
only  one  in  each  of  these  two  groups  expressing  doubt  in  the 
reality  of  an  after  life.  All  the  rest  believed  in  immortality, 
and  all,  except  one,  in  personal  immortality.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  one  other  thing  which  will  be  noted  below,  this  was  the 
only  feature  of  special  importance  to  be  observed  in  these  two 
groups. 

From  all  the  above  returns,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  belief  in 
personal  immortality  far  outstrips  that  of  any  other  form  of 
survival.  Seventy-two  per  cent,  of  all  our  respondents  hold 
to  a  belief  in  the  preservation  of  personality  in  a  future  life. 
The  idea  of  an  impersonal  survival  does  not  seem  to  fascinate 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY 

the  imagination  of  most  people.  If  they  are  to  survive,  imy 
want  to  know  it  and  to  consciously  participate  in  whatever  the 
future  may  have  for  them. 

Another  disclosure  of  importance  is  that  relating  to  the  time 
and  cause  of  changes  in  belief.  Fifty-two  per  cent,  of  our 
respondents  reported  themselves  as  having  passed  through  a 
period  of  radical  change  regarding  their  belief  in  a  future  life. 
The  time  at  which  these  changes  took  place  were  almost  invari- 
ably that  of  later  adolescence.  This,  as  we  know,  is  the  college 
period,  and  the  causes  assigned  for  these  changes  indicated  were 
said  to  be,  in  almost  every  case,  the  effect  of  the  study  of 
science  and  philosophy  during  the  college  course.  An  inter- 
esting side-light  upon  this  aspect  of  the  subject  is  furnished  by 
our  college  and  High  School  returns.  Out  of  the  forty-six 
copies  of  our  syllabus  which  were  distributed  among  High 
School  pupils,  forty-six  copies  were  returned,  all  answered. 
Out  of  the  one  hundred  copies  which  were  distributed  among 
college  students,  only  twenty  were  returned.  The  distribution 
of  these  latter  copies  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  four  college 
professors,  one  in  each  of  four  different  colleges.  One  of  these 
colleges  returned  fourteen  copies,  another  six,  and  the  other  two 
none.  Of  the  forty-six  respondents  from  the  High  School  level, 
only  four  reported  changes  of  view  regarding  the  future.  Of 
the  twenty  respondents  from  the  college  level,  on  the  other 
hand,  fourteen  reported  changes  of  belief.  It  would  seem  from 
all  this,  then,  that  the  time  of  radical  readjustment  of  belief  in 
immortality  is  during  the  college  period  or  the  time  of  later 
adolescence.  And  the  intensity  of  this  process  of  readjustment 
seems  to  be  pretty  accurately  measured  by  the  small  number  of 
those  who  are  willing  to  commit  their  views  to  paper,  and  also 
by  the  large  percentage  of  changes  in  belief  found  among  those 
who  are  willing  thus  to  commit  themselves.  All  this,  of  course, 
comports  with  what  we  have  long  since  known,  namely,  that 
the  age  of  adolescence  is  the  age  of  psychical  upheaval  and  of 
radical  readjustment  of  beliefs,  a  fact  which  carries  with  it  a 
tremendous  pedagogical  significance,  as  all  must  admit. 

One  other  important  fact  should  not  be  overlooked.  While 
it  is  true  that,  for  various  reasons,  many  are  now  questioning 
the  validity  of  the  belief  in  a  future  life,  yet  the  almost  unani- 
mous verdict  of  our  returns  is  that  an  annihilation  of  this  belief 
would  work  untold  harm,  both  immediately  and  ultimately. 


48  JOURNAL  OF  RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY 

Only  seven  venture  a  contrary  judgment.  And  the  reason  for 
this  solicitude  is  placed  wholly  on  the  ground  of  its  practical 
moral  value.  It  is  held  that  this  belief  has  been  one  of  the  most 
potent  incentives  to  a  good  life  that  has  motivated  human  con- 
duct. In  Pragmatic  phraseology  it  has  "worked,"  and,  hence, 
according  to  Pragmatic  logic,  it  is  "  true. ' '  But  does  it ' '  work  ? ' ' 
Does  the  belief  in  a  future  life  put  man  in  more  helpful  and 
healthful  relations  with  his  environment?  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  it  does.  No  doubt  life  would  still  have  worth  even 
though  the  belief  in  immortality  were  destroyed.  But  with 
the  destruction  of  this  belief,  life  would  certainly  lose  a  large 
percentage  of  its  worth  for  most  people.  It  is  by  no  means  a 
cheap  belief.  Its  power  to  enrich  life  is  great.  It  is  at  once 
both  humanizing  and  expanding.  Nothing  can  more  effectively 
kill  out  the  brute  in  man  and  spur  him  on  to  the  attainment  of 
high  moral  manhood  than  the  thought  of  immortality.  What 
else  can  strip  a  human  soul  so  utterly  bare  naked  of  everything 
but  itself  as  this  thought  of  the  future?  And,  surely,  if  any- 
thing should  induce  a  man  to  be  good,  it  is  the  contemplation 
of  one  day  having  nothing  to  fall  back  upon  but  himself. 
"What  a  hell  such  an  experience  is  for  some  people.  They  dread 
to  be  alone.  They  are  such  poor  company  to  themselves  that 
unless  they  have  a  book  or  a  friend  or  some  exciting  pleasure 
to  divert  their  attention  from  themselves  they  are  utterly 
wretched.  There  is  a  Book  that  asks  this  question:  "Where- 
withal shall  a  young  man  cleanse  his  way  ? ' '  and  the  same  Book 
answers,  "By  taking  heed  thereto  according  to  thy  Word." 
For  a  man  to  take  heed  to  his  way  in  the  light  of  his  immortal 
destiny  is  a  most  powerful  cleanser  from  all  brutal  defilement. 
And  not  only  that.  The  belief  in  a  future  life  is  not  only 
humanizing  but  it  is  also  expanding  in  its  effects  upon  char- 
acter. It  gives  to  human  endeavor  its  most  enhancing  orienta- 
tion. It  says  to  every  laborer,  do  your  best,  you  are  not  carv- 
ing a  statue  of  ice  to  be  melted  down  by  the  hot  rays  of  anni- 
hilation, you  are  carving  a  figure  out  of  materials  that  are  inde- 
structible, do  your  best  therefore.  Such  has  ever  been  the 
appeal  of  the  belief  in  immortality  to  the  human  heart.  And 
wherever  this  appeal  has  been  responded  to,  there  do  we  find 
our  noblest  character  and  our  highest  service.  A  belief,  there- 
fore, that  has  blessed  the  race  with  such  results  as  these  we  can 
ill-afford  to  abandon.    And  we  are   pleased  to  say  that  as 


SPIDLE:   IMMORTALITY  49 

rational  beings  we  are  not  obliged  to  abandon  it.  So  far  as 
the  writer  is  aware,  no  field  of  human  research  has  as  yet  demon- 
strated the  denial  of  immortality.  The  burden  of  proof  is  not 
with  the  man  who  affirms,  but  with  the  man  who  denies,  a  future 
life.  He  has  the  instincts  of  the  whole  race  against  him.  Are 
these  instincts  false  ?  They  may  be,  but  it  remains  to  be  shown. 
In  my  inner  heart  of  hearts  I  have  the  conviction,  however  I 
may  have  received  it,  that  my  life  is  destined  to  unfold  into  a 
higher  order  than  the  present.  This  conviction  rules  and  mo- 
tivates all  the  activities  of  my  life.  Who  will  say  that  it  is  a 
delusion?  It  may  be,  but  I  await  a  positive  demonstration  of 
it.  Till  otherwise  proved,  I  shall  cling  to  my  belief  in  a  per- 
sonal immortality  as  one  of  the  most  precious  boons,  not  only 
of  my  own  life,  but  of  the  life  of  the  race. 

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